Dear Members:
We wish to report that Majority Leader Calderon did not take up AB 1208, the Trial Court Rights Act, for a floor vote last Friday. The bill remains held on the floor of the Assembly to be taken up later within this two-year session of the Legislature. The Alliance of California Judges remains satisfied with the progress of the bill. We trust Majority Leader Calderon’s judgment on when to take the bill up and we defer to his management of the bill. Calderon said. “I think it will be useful to have some time between now and when the bill does move to the Senate.” The bill enjoys strong bipartisan support, and we look forward to its further consideration and enactment.
The Trial Court Rights Act is the most significant trial court funding bill in a decade. It insures that funds appropriated by the Legislature for trial court operations will be available for that purpose and not diverted. It has been through two policy committees and is on the floor. The AOC had paid lobbyists working full time to kill this bill. With all of the AOC and Judicial Council resources that were brought to bear, AB 1208 will move forward.
The Chief Justice was reported last week as calling the bill an effort to curtail her power. We do not seek to challenge the authority of the Chief Justice nor do we see this issue as a question of any particular judge exercising power over another judge. We are working judges trying to deliver services to the public. Funds that the Legislature declares appropriated for trial court operations should not be used otherwise. Unelected bureaucrats should not be permitted to impose these projects on the court or fund them at the expense of persons who depend upon open and operating trial courts. This fundamental precept drives AB 1208.
The dialogue started by the Alliance and advanced by this bill has led to legislative scrutiny of the questionable spending priorities of the AOC and Judicial Council, including the payment of overly generous pension benefits to the highest paid bureaucrats, out of control spending on courthouse maintenance and construction projects, and the irresponsible funding of the CCMS project without adequate oversight and at the expense of the delivery of trial court services to the public.
AB 1208 will be just the beginning of the process to reform the judicial branch. All of the judges of this state are now participants in that process.
Directors,
Alliance of California Judges
_________________________________________
Calderon Shelves AB 1208, the Trial Court Rights Act
Cheryl Miller
The Recorder
June 03, 2011
The Trial Court Rights Act, controversial legislation that divided the judiciary and put the chief justice on the defensive early in her tenure, was quietly shelved today.
Assembly Floor Majority Leader Charles Calderon, D-Montebello, declined to bring up AB 1208 for a full floor vote on the final day to move Assembly bills to the state Senate. The legislation now becomes a two-year bill, which, barring some procedural maneuvering, means lawmakers will take no action on it until next year.
Calderon said he had secured 41 votes for the bill but was concerned about a partisan voting atmosphere that had turned the Assembly floor “caustic.”
“I just didn’t want to take the bill up under those circumstances and I just ran out of time,” he said.
Supporters and critics of AB 1208, including many judges on both sides, engaged in heavy lobbying this week. Opponents questioned whether Calderon ever had enough floor votes for his bill as some Assembly Democrats appeared hesitant to vote on polarizing legislation that seemed doomed to fail in the state Senate. Assembly Speaker John Perez had endorsed AB 1208, but on Friday his office’s official floor alert to fellow Democrats took a “no position” stance on the bill. Calderon said the position simply reflected the contentious debate surrounding AB 1208.
Curtis Child, the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts’ government affairs office, called on both sides to put aside “divisive” issues and present a unified front on the state budget and other issues.
“As the chief justice has stated, she is looking at the branch, at both the AOC and branch issues, and she is moving quickly to address what she sees as concerns,” Child said.
Sponsored by the Alliance of California Judges, AB 1208 was heavily amended over the past four months and eventually became a bill that would have curbed the Judicial Council’s power to divert trial court money for statewide or special initiatives. And while judicial branch leaders fought the measure as an unwelcome intrusion by the Legislature, the bill exposed serious divisions among judges over the benefits and problems associated with a strongly centralized branch.
“We’re very satisfied with the progress of the bill,” said Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe, an alliance director. “We’re not the legislator, and we fully trust the majority leader’s judgment on when to take up the bill. … We’re on the right side of this issue and that’s why I have confidence.”
Calderon insisted that he’s not abandoning the bill and that he has political momentum on his side.
“I don’t see any action on the part of the Judicial Council that suggests to me that they’re going to deal with these issues,” Calderon said. “I think it will be useful to have some time between now and when the bill does move to the Senate.”
Judicial Council Watcher 
wendy darling
June 6, 2011
We stand with you, and also remain fully committed to the enactment of AB 1208.
Long live the ACJ.
wendy darling
June 6, 2011
“As the chief justice has stated, she is looking at the branch, at both the AOC and branch issues, and she is moving quickly to address what she sees as concerns,” Child said.
Really? “Moving quickly to address what she sees as concerns”? Moving quickly, how? By forming more committees, and defending and praising Bill Vickrey in the face of the BSA audit report identifying Vickrey’s gross mismanagement of the AOC and the letter from the State Assembly demanding Vickrey be fired? Apparently, the only thing the current Chief Justice is concerned about is protecting her alleged “power” to control trial court funding, the “power” of which belongs to the State Legislature, not the Chief Justice.
If this is the Chief Justice’s idea of “moving quickly” we’ll all be in the next Ice Age before anything meaningful happens to clean up the California judicial branch, let alone start approaching anything even remotely resembling branch accountability, transparency, credibility, and ethical conduct.
Long live the ACJ.
antonatrail
June 6, 2011
She’s moving quickly to preserve the status quo that King George created, which I believe everyone can see is NOT working for the benefit of the California judiciary and its citizens.
Long live the ACJ!
JusticeCalifornia
June 7, 2011
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_1201-1250/ab_1208_bill_20110606_status.html
what does this mean?
Judicial Council Watcher
June 7, 2011
“Referred to APPR suspense file” are the keywords in this entry. The bill is being held by the appropriations committee in this years’ legislative suspense file at Calderon’s request.
Mrs. Kramer
June 7, 2011
Moving quickly to close the drawbridge before the peasants can storm the castle. Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest of them all?
JusticeCalifornia
June 7, 2011
Interesting.
Well, in the meantime I will soon be compiling the e-mail and fax transmittal evidence of legislators and top leadership members who were put on notice by JusticeCalifornia bulletins disseminated commencing in March of 2009 regarding what has gone down in the branch.
I guessing that information may come in handy, real soon.
Legislators supporting the status quo ought to check their files. . . .or you can ask Senators Corbett and Steinberg for copies– they got pretty much everything, right Senators?
Others who have provided information to the legislature/branch should be checking their transmittal files, as well.
At some point those who are supposed to be serving checks and balances functions are going to have to take responsibility for knowingly leaving the public and the branch at the mercy of an out of control judicial branch run by ethically and fiscally irresponsible top leadership.
I know it’s a lot easier to partake in sideshows and avoid uncomfortable votes and actions, but some of us are pretty darned focused on the REAL branch problems that have gone on, unabated, for years, and that are being actively perpetuated RIGHT NOW at great cost to the public.
wendy darling
June 7, 2011
Published today, Tuesday, June 7, from Courthouse News Service, by Maria Dinzeo:
Trial Court Bill of Rights Switched to Two-Year Track in CA Legislature
By MARIA DINZEO. http://www.courthousenews.com
Also published late today, on The Recorder, the on-line publication of CalLaw, by Cheryl Miller:
Openly Gay Judge to Lead California Judges Association
Cheryl Miller
SACRAMENTO — Judge David Rubin, a former veteran prosecutor and current four-year member of the San Diego County Superior Court bench, was elected the California Judges Association’s 80th president today. http://www.law.com
Long live the ACJ.
Mrs. Kramer
June 7, 2011
From the Dinzeo article: “lobbyists for the Administrative Office of the Courts, the 1000-person bureaucracy that sits over the trial courts, were furiously working the Senate Judiciary Committee for a ‘quick kill’ of the legislation”.
Were these lobbyists actually hired and paid by the AOC with tax dollars or were these lobbyists on behalf of private sector interested parties? How many lobbyists?
JusticeCalifornia
June 7, 2011
I said it before and I say it again. I welcome a continued VERY INTENSE spotlight on top leadership.
And that includes longtime JC-legislative top leadership.
Light disinfects.
The ACJ and Assemblymember Calderon deserve huge props for bringing everyone and everything to the table.
Oppression will not be tolerated here.
wendy darling
June 9, 2011
Published today, Thursday, June 9, on Courthouse News Service, by Maria Dinzeo:
California Judicial Group Elects a New Chief
By MARIA DINZEO. http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/06/09/37243.htm
Long live the ACJ.
JusticeCalifornia
June 11, 2011
Interesting trackback JCW.
It is tragic that ANYONE would consider basing their family law model on what is happening in California.
If the Elkins task force wants to do the world a favor, and let everyone see how poorly our system works, and how great it is at destroying and bankrupting families (fathers, mothers and children) while funneling money to myriad largely unregulated cottage industries, it ought to place the public testimony from April 6, 2009 online.