The thought of having an elected head of your local court is appalling to Mr. Bill. Someone that is accountable to the voters being in charge of the local courts? This simply will not do!
The latest proposal from the Judicial Council is a rule change that takes the power away from he who is elected and gives it to he who is not elected. Of course, part of this is to justify some of the outrageous salaries that are being paid to the newest wave of court execs, who make more than any presiding judge. The other part would place these statewide court execs in a position to execute on AOC’s policy. It’s a lot easier to convince a single court exec of what they should do than it is to convince a group of judges about what they should do. After the Judicial Council / AOC went to great lengths to get the right court execs into the right courts, it’s now time to make them bulletproof and accountable to no one but the AOC.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/02/04/33931.htm
Judicial Council Watcher 
AlwaysAmazed
February 5, 2011
I see the names of the Directors, but I’m wondering how many judges statewide are in the Alliance, or maybe even more interesting: Is there a listing of the judges in the Alliance of California Judges?
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 5, 2011
Due to the highly political nature of the judiciary, some judges and justices would prefer to maintain a quiet membership in the ACJ. As a result, their membership list is confidential. It would be nice to find out who wouldn’t mind being identified as part of this organization besides its directors (whom every California citizen should thank for taking a public stand)
tony maino
February 5, 2011
I am a member of both the CJA (california Judges Association) and the ACJ (Alliance of California Judges).
AlwaysAmazed
February 5, 2011
I certainly would like to express thanks to these judges….for a start: Thank you Judge Maino!
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 5, 2011
Thank you Judge Maino and the rest of the ACJ. We may not agree on everything but what the ACJ represents is better than the status quo, the last bastions of the good ol boy system attempting to justify its continued existence. I’m personally deeply offended by this behind the scenes power grab and its blatant in your face attempt to strip the common man of democratic redress. A pattern that should be evident is that a group of appointees behind the scenes in a meeting that was not open to the public made the decision to fundamentally restructure the courts governance model to one of unbridled, unquestioned authority being granted to the AOC.
The citizens do not advocate a judicial dictatorship run by untouchable people who are not accountable to the voters they serve.
Wendy Darling
February 5, 2011
In the video interview with the new Chief Justice posted on The Recorder earlier this week, Cantil-Sakauye states on tape several times that the reason and purpose for the AOC’s existence is to serve the trial courts. Apparently, the Judicial Council, the AOC, and Bill Vickrey didn’t get that memo.
Or, perhaps, this is the new Chief Justice’s way of letting all of us know right now that nothing substantive is going to change at 455 Golden Gate Avenue, including the new administration not only picking up right where the old administration and the most recently departed Chief Justice left off, but charging full steam ahead, including the institutionalized practice of saying one thing publicly, but doing something entirely different in reality and practice.
Out with the old, in with the same old thing. Lipstick on a pig, indeed.
We all owe a profound debt of thanks and gratitude to the Alliance of California Judges, and I suspect our obligation to their collective courage, integrity, and diligence will only grow in the coming months.
JusticeCalifornia
February 5, 2011
Here is my view. The AOC is apparently demanding Court Executive Officers who are free to kowtow to the AOC, rather than the public they “serve”. Let’s look at one of Ron George’s favorites (besides Kiri Torre and Michael Roddy).
From what I have observed, Marin Court Executive Officer Kim Turner is a thug, a well-paid-gun-for-hire, a courtwh***, as shown by her reported a) willingness to cover for her “friend” and “boss extraordinaire’s” John Montgomery’s $650,000 gifts to his girlfriend on the public dime; b) willingness to pretend she turned Montgomery in; c) gleeful willingness to fire or force out loyal and qualified Marin court employees who said this thug should not be retained in the Marin court; d) gleeful willingness to hire her buddies (on the public dime) to replace good (fired/forced out) employees; e) gleeful and efficient willingness to do Ron George’s courtwh*** job of engaging in a mass destruction of important and damning documents in the middle of a state audit of the Marin court, at the expense of Marin parents and children (I mean seriously, isn’t that really why Big Ron picked her to be on the Judicial Council?); and f) courtwh*** missives denying any Marin court wrongdoing.
Kim Turner is an historically problematic courtwh*** of the worst kind, yet Ron George promoted her to a top position on the CA Judicial Council that allows her to set judicial policy in this state.
Is Turner’s behavior beneficial to the public who is paying for all this courtwh*** garbage? Of course not.
If Chief Justice Tani Cantil Sakauye plays footsie with this historically problematic courtwh***, or promotes the hiring of more of her ilk, we will know who our new Chief Justice is.
Those who know me, know I am a bit of a Pollyanna, and always give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
But if Justice Cantil-Sakauye supports Turner and keeps her on as an advisor, and pushes for the hiring of more like her, over the objection of trial court judges, she will lose the benefit of that doubt.
And that is non-negotiable.
SF Whistle
February 6, 2011
The New CJ faces a number of very important decisions—
1. The proposed power-grab in establishment of this system of CEO lackies will provide a clear picture of her intentions. This appears to resemble something that King George crafted and did not have time or opportunity to execute.
2. It will be fascinating to witness how the CJ will address the recalitrant, deceptive response of Boren and Turner to the audit. She has a decision to make in terms of whether she will support the Boren / Turner misrepresentations about the findings of the audit having no importance and being ministerial and minor.
In the event our new CJ stands by and supports Boren and Turner it will be very clear that she does not understand the need to clean up corruption and deal with an out of control Court—-
It is fascinating that the Sacramento Court has accepted the audit’s findings expressing their intentions to deal with their problems….contrasting with Boren and Turner’s arrogance—-essentially telling Senator Leno to get screwed and feigning outrage at being questioned—-CJ Cantil Sakauye will not be permitted to straddle the fence on this one—she must either support Boren or properly discipline this improper conduct—-Boren and Turner should be looking for work elsewhere…..
wendy darling
February 5, 2011
Interesting article by Judge White of the Sacramento Superior Court, published today, February 5, in The Sacramento Bee. For those so inclined, if you go to the on-line version of today Sacramento Bee, the comments to Judge White’s article posted on the Sacramento Bee’s website are a good read.
And thank you Judge White. You are a credit to your profession, and an honor to your robe.
Viewpoints: Computer network: Big price, little gain
By Steve White
Special to The Bee
Published: Saturday, Feb. 5, 2011 – 12:00 am | Page 13A
The California Court Case Management System, or CCMS, was meant to be a sophisticated computer network linking courts throughout the state. Instead, it’s a train wreck – a black hole into which well over a billion tax dollars are being dumped at a time those funds are urgently needed to keep our trial courts open and open and operating.
Initially, the CCMS was going to cost $260 million and be fully functional by 2009. Now the estimated cost has ballooned to $2 billion, with no firm date for completion.
The system is a folly. An audit by the state’s chief information officer concluded that it was launched without basic business controls, and found that the system’s warranty had expired before it was even delivered. It also turns out that a laptop used repeatedly in demonstrations touting CCMS to legislators, courts and attorneys’ associations wasn’t hooked up to the system’s central server in Tempe, Ariz. – a server so fraught with chronic system failures that the few large courts using CCMS refuse to connect to it.
Only seven counties use CCMS. In Los Angeles County, just one courtroom uses the system – to handle a mere eight small claims cases a day. Here in Sacramento County, CCMS has spawned higher staff costs, case backlogs, long lines for the public and a costly loss of productivity. The system is so cumbersome that it takes hours just to process the filings for a single case.
CCMS is managed by the Administrative Office of the Courts, an obscure bureaucracy directed by the California Judicial Council, which allocates money from the Trial Court Trust Fund to keep our courts operating.
Despite California’s $25.4 billion deficit and looming cuts in court funding, the Judicial Council, at the AOC’s urging, recently took $106 million from the Trial Court Trust Fund and dumped it into CCMS – a remarkable act of tone deafness, given that Gov. Jerry Brown was elected promising to eliminate precisely the kind of waste epitomized by CCMS.
Representing several hundred California judges, I recently urged the Judicial Council to reject this AOC request to waste still more court resources on CCMS, and instead use the trial courts’ money to keep the courts open in the face of deep anticipated budget cuts. The council ignored our plea.
Meanwhile, it’s business-as-usual for the AOC. One day after the governor released his budget, which included a $200 million permanent reduction for the judicial branch, the AOC announced it will hire 18 more staff for CCMS, costing taxpayers from $2.75 million to $3.65 million annually. Utterly amazing.
CCMS is a massively expensive failure. It works only in carefully tended environments and at enormous cost. It should be shelved immediately.
Courts with sophisticated IT departments should meet and make available their existing systems, which can be exported to other counties. And where there is a need to share information among counties, interfaces can be built at minimal cost so information can be shared efficiently and economically.
Like all Californians, trial court judges are facing difficult budget challenges. Nevertheless, our justice system must remain open to the people of California – something we cannot achieve if the Judicial Council continues to bleed trial courts to satisfy the insatiable appetite of CCMS.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
________________________________________
Judge Steve White is the presiding judge of Sacramento Superior Court.
Michael Paul
February 6, 2011
Since I’m already fired…. Since the AOC’s headhunters believe me to be a well qualified ccms architecture candidate…. I suppose it’s just icing on the cake to indicate that I share many of the concerns of Judge White. CCMS is a train wreck that should have been developed and completed in less than two years. The AOC didn’t hire a software company, they hired a consulting company that’s bleeding them dry. If what happened with the L.A. Unified School District’s payroll system or what happened with Marin County’s accounting system isn’t a subtle baseball bat like clue to what’s happening behind the scenes in development between the AOC and Deloitte today, someone has their blinders on.
I have heard rollout readiness commitments on CCMS for as long as Boeing has been building the 787 dreamliner and just like the dreamliner, it’s delivery is blown back six months here, six months there. The difference that I see between CCMS and the Dreamliner is that the Dreamliner is real and has already taken to the skies.
CCMS on the other hand has been demo’ed to everyone on a laptop to simulate functionality and even simulation demos fail. As part of a team of senior AOC IT people, there wasn’t a person on my team that was not in shock at the amount of money being tossed at CCMS or the perpetually blown back dates. Even AOC IT people question the competency of their management over CCMS.
Michael Paul
February 6, 2011
Going the extra mile-
1. The concept of a centralized server based in Tempe Arizona that every court is to rely upon is a concept as useful as a pet rock as neither the network architecture of the courts nor the CCTC has enough carrier redundancy to make it reliable, nor does anyone wish to be paying for the bandwidth or carrier redundancy necessary to make the connections fast and reliable.
2. Any concept of CCMS deployment that does not connect a local clerk to a server sitting on their local infrastructure should be D.O.A. if any documents are to be scanned into it.
3. If you desire to exchange data between a mothership server and a bunch of spoke servers, use scheduled after hours differential replacation of the database to achieve this and not impact the end users. Thousands of simultaneous connections over a wide area network to a server in Tempe that is trying to multiprocess threads of scanned data and serve other data back to users will be problematic.
Of course, nobody needs to take my word for any of this. Ask your senior IT people in your courts.
Michael Paul
February 7, 2011
To clarify my position: CCMS is a waste of money. Its development should cease. We pulled the plug on the DMV’s tandem system 15 years ago at a lot smaller price tag and a lot less years invested because people couldn’t get it to work. Nine years after this project was commissioned, it still does not work the way the AOC representatives would wish it would work. Meanwhile, most courts have changed their underlying computer operating systems three or four times with at least three operating systems in the windows world being written and deployed in your courts. (Windows 2000, XP,maybe the poor souls in your courts went to vista but many skipped over to Windows 7)
The platforms and the underlying software CCMS is being developed on have undergone a similar transformation. Each of these transformations typically require extensive recoding and/or verification testing, which means that Deloittes role will never end at the AOC and every new release of software or OS’s is another reason to update the application and delay the rollout.
CCMS is not being developed by a U.S. software company employing U.S. based coders. As a result there is no institutional knowledge of the underlying code. Rather, this whole application is being coded by temporary workers who are visiting here from india under H1B’s – and will return to india when their assignments are finished. Deloitte likely pays them somewhere in the range of $40.00 and charges the AOC upwards of $300.00 per hour for these consultants. There is not just a few core consultants working this project. There are hundreds of consultants working this project.
Food for thought for some of the courts I worked with over the years: It took four people to design, develop and roll out Exchange on Windows 2000 to the AOC, Appellate and Supreme Courts. So why does it take upwards of 200 consultants to write a freaking application?
It doesn’t. Maybe 10 people have the core competencies required to design and develop this application and the other 190 are there to pad the bill to the AOC.
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 7, 2011
You have to agree that they couldn’t have picked a better captain for the good ship CCMS. Look for a privatization effort that makes CCMS a public/private company formed to license an application no one else wants. I missed that Marin County (smartly) moved its rico complaint against deloitte to federal court. Since we’re all painfully aware that the same B.S. that went on in Marin is going on between Deloitte people and AOC people I suppose we’re going to send Judnick to look into it and erase the trail?
JusticeCalifornia
February 7, 2011
Sometimes it is useful to look at the Judicial Council’s own commissioned reports. . . .
On April 15, 2009, JusticeCalifornia wrote and disseminated to certain members of the legislature a bulletin analyzing the June 2005 Praxis report referenced below. JusticeCalifornia pointed out that according to the report, fairness and diversity were lowest on the list of AOC and trial court objectives, and that judicial accountability was the largest unmet public expectation. (Perhaps I will post the bulletin in in segments on the Marin audit blog).
For purposes of this particular discussion it is interesting to look at the report, and then look at “top leadership’s” attempt to force CCMS on everyone, in the middle of an economic crisis, at the apparent expense of almost everything else. (And since when did the AOC effectively take over piloting the branch’s plane?)
Click to access cafinalrep061305.pdf
The branch needs to get back to the basics.
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 7, 2011
They’ve gotten back to basics. Those with the most familiarity of our courts, both litigants and attorneys, rated our courts incredibly low on trust and confidence. This was the basics. Back to basics is a matter of arrogance. If they didn’t like us before, let’s increase all fees and costs and make ourselves less available, less accountable and less transparent while feigning all these things and see how they like us then…
wendy darling
February 7, 2011
Or just change the “rules” to make sure there is no accountablility and transparency expected or required.
SF Whistle
February 7, 2011
why bother to change “rules”….when arrogance allows you to not even pretend you’re following them?
The fact that no accountability— no transparancy is an expectation or requirement is a given.
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 7, 2011
You’re probably wondering why JCW didn’t bother posting the opinion of Christopher Dolan of Dolan law. That’s because the only thing Mr. Dolan has seen is a laptop simulation. After Mr. Dolan has spent a day in Sacramento with Judge White, I’d like to see if he still has the same opinion. That opinion I am willing to post. Not one based on viewing a vaporware simulation.
JusticeCalifornia
February 7, 2011
I don’t want to be jaded.
But let’s expect the branch’s creative public relations use of Prop 8 to deflect attention from the state auditor’s CCMS report.
JusticeCalifornia
February 7, 2011
And let’s hope that is not the “Big” Ron”/Ron O./Bill V./et. al/ Tani C-S theme song. . . .
This next three weeks will be very interesting.