Backlog

By next April, judges will be able to take their vacations early, joked District Attorney Ronald D. Castille. The DA said that based on the number of guilty pleas by criminals charged with committing felonies during the first six months of the year, there will be a "zero" backlog of cases by next spring. By the end of the year, the number of felony cases awaiting trials will be down to an unprecedented 4,900, Castille said yesterday during a news conference with judges and other criminal justice system officials.

The city's judicial system is choking on backlogged cases, District Attorney Ronald D. Castille said yesterday, and he urged Mayor Goode to build a courthouse in Center City and to renegotiate a court-ordered cap on prison inmates. "The system is headed for pretty much of a crisis unless we take some drastic steps," Castille said yesterday at a City Hall news conference. "We're looking at a backlog that's going to be astounding. " Castille said the system's backlog of felony cases was about 11,000 at the end of 1988 and is projected to grow to more than 14,000 by the end of this year.

A huge backlog of claims to Blue Cross of Greater Philadelphia for major- medical insurance payments has been slashed to a near-normal level. The backlog is down to about 11,000 claims from a high of more than 60,000 in January. A spokesman said the insurer's processing schedule was expected to be back to normal by June. "I fully believe in two weeks we'll have it down to 8,000 or less . . . a level that's normal for this time of year," James R. Vivian, director of the major-medical section, said in an interview last Friday.

Alfred Zollers is a matchmaker and, at first glance, his job would seem rather easy. When a criminal case comes into the Mongtgomery County Common Pleas Court, Zollers, the district attorney's chief clerk, simply makes certain that the case is assigned to a judge. One case, one judge. Piece of cake. Except that lately, the pieces haven't been fitting so nicely. Instead, Zollers said he has found that the county's growing backlog of criminal cases is making it more and more difficult for him to match a case with a judge.

Burlington County's newest Superior Court judges will have to look backward to move forward in their new jobs. Next month, after each is sworn in to his seven-year post, John Sweeney and Jan Schlesinger will encounter the remnants of a period when too few judges grappled with too many cases: Backlog. Court records show that 3,740 of the 13,915 cases pending from July through October have exhausted the prescribed time limits for when a case should be heard - constituting a backlog of 27 percent.

If you bought or sold a house in Philadelphia during the last year or so and it seems as if you've been waiting an eternity for the city to record the deed or mortgage, you aren't dreaming. The city controller's office says you're caught up in a whopping backlog that's costing taxpayers an indeterminable sum of money. In an audit released yesterday, City Controller Jonathan Saidel disclosed that the city Department of Records at one point had failed to enter 30,000 deeds, mortgages and related documents into its official data base.

The Gloucester County Utilities Authority, apparently rebounding from the sludge-disposal problems that plagued it this spring, has again started accepting septic waste from haulers outside Gloucester County. Gary Whalen, operations manager for the authority, said last night that the backlog of sewage that had accumulated at the treatment plant last month - at one point almost three million gallons - had now been almost completely removed. For the last month, the authority has refused to accept septic waste from outside the county.

The Pennsylvania State Police isn't shying away from the truth: It has a massive backlog of criminal DNA evidence that could solve an untold number of crimes. It's a problem with far-reaching ramifications, as evidenced by the case of Antonio Rodriguez, who police sources said confessed yesterday to being the murderous Kensington Strangler. A sample of Rodriguez's DNA was provided to the State Police on Oct. 25 - a week before the first of the Strangler's victims was found - but was not uploaded into the national CODIS database until Jan. 10, said Jack Lewis, a State Police spokesman.

The Camden County Probation Department says it has virtually eliminated the backlog that delayed the delivery of thousands of child-support checks earlier this month. Bob Fisler, supervisor of the department's domestic relations division, said yesterday that the division had returned to the four- to five-day "turnaround" time - the time it takes to issue a check to the children after receiving payment from the father - that was the norm before the backlog. "We're getting up to speed," Fisler said.

Toll Bros. Inc. said that its revenue and profits rose sharply in the third quarter, but that its backlog of contracts for new houses declined from a year earlier. At the end of its third quarter, the Horsham homebuilder's backlog of contracts for new houses was 366, valued at $102.8 million, down from a backlog of 467 homes, valued at $125.8 million, a year before. The firm attributed the decline to a lower demand in its New Jersey markets, the timing of certain government approvals, and the fact that a comparatively larger number of its projects were in the start-up phase in new markets.

BY APRIL, most of us are happy to be viewing winter weather in the rearview mirror. But there are thousands in the city who dread April more than the deep freeze of February, because that's when the moratorium on utility shutoffs expires. That means that PGW and Peco are now allowed to shut you off if you haven't been able to keep up on your utility bills. This is a cold drama that gets played out every year. But some years are harder than others, and this past winter has seen not only higher utility prices coupled with a colder winter, but also a program that helps low-income people with heating bills has a backlog of applications only slightly smaller than the huge backlog of last year.

WASHINGTON - Although the number of pending veterans' disability claims keep soaring, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki on Sunday said he's committed to ending the backlog in 2015 by replacing paper with electronic records. Veterans receive disability compensation for injuries or illness incurred during their active military service. About 600,000 claims, or 70 percent, are considered backlogged. The number of claims pending for more than 125 days has nearly quadrupled under Shinseki's watch.

GOOD-GOVERNMENT group the Committee of Seventy is concerned about a backlog of voter-registration applications in the City Commission's Office ahead of the Nov. 6 presidential election. Seventy's president, Zack Stalberg, wrote to city officials that it appears that the number of unprocessed registrations may exceed 20,000, "raising the possibility that potential voters will not be registered - or know whether they are registered - in time to vote on Election Day. " "We got calls from a number of voters who were concerned they didn't get their voter registration yet," said Ellen Kaplan, policy director for the Committee of Seventy, adding that it would like to help by either recruiting volunteers to assist commission staff or urging the Commissioners to hire temporary workers that can help tackle the backlog.

TRENTON - New Jersey would have to start paying unemployment to people who appeal denials but cannot get answers to them within eight weeks under a bill advanced Monday by a state Senate committee. The bill, which advanced on a 3-0 vote with two abstentions by the Labor Committee, is intended to push the Department of Labor to deal with appeals that have been piling up as the number of unemployed remains high and the state denies a larger portion of claims. On Monday, state Department of Labor Department and Workforce Development officials told the committee that it has structural changes to deal with reducing the backlog.

FROM THOSE wonderful workers at the state Department of Public Welfare - the ones who will soon have to start verifying the assets of up to 1.8 million recipients of food stamps in the state - comes a massive backlog of applications for heating assistance that could lead to utility shut-offs for tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians as soon as next week. Lawyers from Community Legal Services sent a letter Tuesday to the Public Utility Commission asking that utility customers who filed for help from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)

THE POLICE Advisory Commission is often described as a toothless, civilian-run police oversight board without the authority to do anything. The PAC is only able to make recommendations to the Police Department in response to citizen complaints - something it's done just 21 times since 1994. In January, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey accepted a recommendation that officers brush up on guidelines about obtaining search warrants after two cops illegally entered a Frankford house in 2010.

Amid complaints from corporate defense lawyers about the fairness of Philadelphia's civil justice system, judicial leaders have begun to make changes they say will reduce a backlog of cases and improve the overall functioning of the courts. The changes, put forth quietly in an order from Common Pleas Court Judge John Herron, focus in large measure on what he said was an overflow of asbestos lawsuits by out-of-state lawyers. But they also go well beyond asbestos litigation and address many of the concerns defense lawyers have raised.

HIGHLIGHTING the importance of processing DNA evidence, Chester County prosecutors said yesterday that they had solved a three-year-old rape case thanks to DNA taken from a man after he was convicted of an unrelated crime. Maynard Church, 38, was walking with his German shepherd on Sept. 27, 2009, in East Nottingham Township when he came upon a 14-year-old girl who was walking alone on Little Elk Creek Road, police said. Church forced the victim to her hands and knees, had her take off her shoes, and smelled her feet and rubbed them on his face, according to court documents.

IN THE EIGHT months since armed robbers first burst into the TriStar Market, in Yeadon, store owner Patel Bharat has turned his counter and sandwich station into a $15,000 bulletproof glass cage. Yet the State Police's Bureau of Forensic Services still hasn't processed three pieces of evidence - a gun, clothing and gloves - that were left behind at the scene and may hold the DNA clues to solving the case. In the meantime, Bharat's store has been robbed twice more at gunpoint, including less than a month after the first robbery - and by the same two men, he believes.