Tough times call for tough measures, or so the saying goes. No one knows about tough cuts better than Julie Loesch.

She is director of the Center for Resolution and Justice at the Child & Family Justice Center. Her organization offers mediation services to families and individuals as an efficient, effective, cost-saving way to resolve disputes.

The organization saw its state funding slashed by 40 percent last year, at a time when economic uncertainties have led to an increase in the type of cases it handles.

Asked about the impact of those cuts on the agency's ability to deliver services, Loesch said the Center for Resolution and Justice is fortunate to have a large stable of volunteer mediators who have stepped in to fill the void.

Still, the cuts sting.

"Due to the cuts, we exhausted our available funds to pay our roster of mediators," she said. "We were on track to handle about 600 referrals this (fiscal) year at a cost of less than $190 per resolution."

Loesch anticipates that when the fiscal year comes to a close March 31, actual mediations will still be down about 20 percent, even with the volunteers.

While no one is questioning the financial mess New York state is in, this seems to be a case of being penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to budget cuts.

Anyone who has ever spent time in a courthouse can tell you that the wheels of justice move at a painfully slow pace. The idea of getting a legal issue resolved at an average cost of $190 is almost laughable. Yet Loesch's group is able to do just that - when the funds are available, that is.

Now, absent funds to sustain the program, cases will ultimately be turned away. And what might have been settled for under $200 will now land in court, clogging a system that in many jurisdictions is woefully overburdened.

This issue of funding cuts to civil legal service programs is nothing new.

Talk to Bob Elardo at the Volunteer Lawyers Project or Karen Nicholson at Legal Services for the Elderly, Disabled and Disadvantaged and the story is the same. The money is cut, those most in need are turned away and the trickle-down effect is felt throughout the community.

Loesch pointed to parents who are forced to miss work or pay for child care in an attempt to navigate the complex legal system all alone as just one example of the secondary effects of the funding cuts. Internally, her group - which serves all eight counties of Western New York - has shut down offices and laid off staff since the hammer came down.

These days she operates the center with two full-time workers, supplementing with part-timers and the increasingly important volunteers.

She said she and her staff aren't sitting idly by, however.

They organized an online petition to send e-postcards to Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, urging him to restore funds to the centers statewide. They also are working to secure grants  and Loesch said they are actively fund-raising as a means of bridging the gap from lost revenue.

While it is admirable that the Center for Resolution and Justice is taking proactive measures, the scenario offers a look at the backward approach to budgeting the state so often takes.

For every $1,000 cut from the center's budget, an average of five cases will fall by the wayside. The state saves $1,000 on the front side, but what will those five cases cost once they are fed into the court system? $5,000? $10,000? More?

Here's hoping wiser heads prevail in Albany and funding is restored to all of the civil legal service programs that serve our community.

Beyond being the right thing to do, it simply makes sound fiscal sense.

Matt Chandler is associate editor of the Buffalo Law Journal. Contact him at mchandler@bizjournals.com