House Journal: Page 71: Wednesday, January 15, 2003
for about 13 months, now takes about 4 months. That means children can be adopted
sooner, or, in some cases, families wait less time before they’re reunited.
The longer a case continues, the more stress on the families and children involved.
Children in these situations routinely need more therapy to cope with the uncertainty
of waiting for the process to conclude. Our new rules ease the strain of families and
children. As Judge Stephen Clarke so aptly said, "One of the primary goals of the new
rules is to let children have a childhood." Our new procedures are helping us do this.
The new rules have also helped ease the workload of juvenile judges, social workers,
juvenile court officers, court appointed attorneys, and county attorneys.
Many people deserve credit for this success. The new procedures were the
brainchild of our Iowa Court Improvement Project Task Force. The General Assembly
and the Governor also deserve praise for your part in this success story. A simple, but
important statutory change that you approved in 2001, helped make the expedited
procedures possible. We’re grateful for your assistance.
Our new appellate rules are the first of their kind and a model for other states.
Now we’re ready to expand the rules to child in need of assistance cases, and again, we
need your help to do so. We urge you to pass legislation, which we have submitted to
you, that would allow us to expedite more of these important cases.
iowacourtsonline.org
Perhaps our most significant advancements in the past few years have come
through the use of information technology. The Internet is increasingly becoming the
place where government business is conducted. According to a recent study, citizens’
use of the Internet to access government services increased in the US from 24% to 43%
in 2001.
Last February, we took a giant step by starting iowacourtsonline, a service that
enables anyone with Internet access to search court records in all counties and the
appellate courts. Before this, people had to travel to each clerk of court office to search
for the information. Now it’s at their fingertips. A person can search the records by
typing in a name or case number. And the basic service, which provides important
information such as criminal charges, restitution, child support payments, and
criminal sentences, is free. This site has been very popular, attracting 12,000 to 15,000
hits each day.
In September last year, we expanded the service by offering more detailed case
information for a monthly subscription fee of $25. This feature is popular with lawyers,
abstractors, insurance companies, and state and local government agencies.
E-Pay
Before long, we’ll be adding another feature: e-pay. E-pay will allow people to pay
their fines and court costs online. We hope the convenience of paying online will
encourage people to pay their fines promptly.
The benefits of our online services are two-fold: they serve as convenient tools for
citizens, and they ease the burden on clerks’ offices. The time that clerks’ offices used
to spend retrieving records has been freed up for other priorities.
© 2003 Cornell College and
League of Women Voters of Iowa
Comments about this site or page?
hjourn@legis.iowa.gov.
Please remember that the person listed above does not vote on bills. Direct all comments concerning legislation to State Legislators.
Last update: Wed Jul 2 14:05:00 CDT 2003
URL: /DOCS/GA/80GA/Session.1/HJournal/00000/00071.html
jhf