Backlog

The results are in. "The Blitz," a Superior Court effort to settle backlogged divorce cases, posted the best results ever this year. Courthouse corridors were noisy and cramped every day in May, as more than 100 lawyers and clients huddled in front of elevators, restrooms, and wherever else they could find a space to whisper and sometimes argue about sticky divorce details. The Blitz was on, and pressure was applied to get estranged couples to settle divorce disputes that were more than a year old. Eighty-seven percent, or 170 of the 196 couples, agreed on divorce terms, according to Mary Jarvis, a Burlington County court coordinator who created the Blitz five years ago. She borrowed the football term for the court system's "all-out team effort" to remove thorny cases from the divorce dockets.

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.

Cold? Hold on, the gas man's coming. Really. The Philadelphia Gas Works has unhobbled its repair forces by stripping away overtime restrictions. Customer-service representatives will be hitting the streets over extended hours this week to attack the ballooning service backlog. Service reps will be on 12-hour shifts and available until 7 p.m. PGW was getting as many as 40,000 calls a day since early December, most relating to heating problems. About 2,000 calls a day were followed up by 1,800 service reps.

Your Feb. 23 story concerning the Department of Records backlog relied on information generated by the city controller that is nearly a year old. Thanks to an aggressive program to eliminate the records backlog, I can report that for all major functions of this office, there is no backlog with respect to recording deeds, mortgages, assignment of mortgages and revenue collection (taxes and fees.) In all of these areas, the Records Department is current. All documents affecting a priority of interest in real estate are recorded within three to five working days.

Toll Bros. Inc., the Huntingdon Valley home builder, yesterday reported record earnings and revenues for the year and for the fourth quarter, which ended Oct. 31. A continued strong residential market in the company's home base of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, particularly in the pricey move-up market, brought a 46 percent increase over last year's record revenues. The company's average price for a single-family home in the Philadelphia suburbs is slightly more than $300,000.

Despite a decline in revenue for the third quarter, which ended July 31, Toll Bros. Inc. yesterday reported that profits increased by nearly a third in the period. The Horsham home developer said that delays in the opening of seven communities had hurt sales. But the limited supply of homes, at a time of increasing demand, helped to improve profit margins. Robert I. Toll, chairman, said sales were down because of "increased governmental regulation which delayed the opening of many new communities.

Complicating plans to settle a lawsuit it believes it cannot win, the Whitman administration has discovered nearly 200 more inmates eligible for release but awaiting parole hearings. Just six weeks ago, the state Attorney General's Office stated that the number of New Jersey inmates awaiting parole board hearings was about 2,800 - a disclosure that rocked an agency that had been insisting that the backlog was no more than several hundred. The state immediately began negotiations to settle a lawsuit brought this year by a group of inmates at Riverfront State Prison in Camden contending that they are still incarcerated while eligible for release.

Though nearly 10,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians remain in limbo wondering whether they are entitled to unemployment benefits, state officials say it will take until at least June to clear up a backlog of unemployment appeals cases. New Jersey's appeal system falls somewhat short of national standards, but Pennsylvania's is among the nation's worst, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. Slammed by a tough labor market, the situation is particularly acute in the Philadelphia region, which generates 28 percent of the appeals, but constitutes 40 percent of the backlog.

The Philadelphia Department of Records' apparent nonchalance over an ongoing backlog of roughly 50,000 real estate documents waiting to be recorded rankled the judge. Most disturbing to Common Pleas Judge Gene D. Cohen was the department's policy of giving special treatment to members of the mayor's staff and to friends of City Council members who did not want to wait like everyone else had to do. The idea bothered Cohen so much that he not only ordered the city to clear up the backlog within six months, but said it was never again to give anyone special treatment to have documents recorded out of turn.