24 days – Unconfirmed intel from the trenches + The Feinstein letter to the JC

Posted on August 23, 2011

26


Good Afternoon California,

This is chatter – unconfirmed intel from the trenches we’re looking for you to confirm or add upon-

From last weeks CEAC/PJAC meetings we hear this unconfirmed scuttle:

1) The AOC has made it clear that the CCMS implementation money reserved for the CCMS pilot courts is just that. Implementation money reserved for the CCMS pilot courts.  Apparently the AOC’s position is that after you have spent a half billion dollars on this program, you’re not entitled to it unless you agree to keep on paying or you can convince the legislature to pay your way. In the meantime, you’re still paying for CCMS development. Courts that already paid are being told they must pay for implementation the AOC way and must pay for licensing and hosting and agree to clawbacks out of their own court budgets.

 2) Because Tonto wishes to deflect criticism away from the AOC, he informed others that he intended to release the amounts held in trial courts reserves “tomorrow”. (This was last week. ) He intended this to be a raw release of information that does not include reserves that are already encumbered as future expenses and non-discretionary reserves mandated by the Judicial Council. This caused quite the uproar as the reserves held are already encumbered. In response, the borg collective suggested that each trial court report to the AOC exactly how their reserves are encumbered, which caused a whole lot more fuss because trial courts must do quarterly reports that include this information and upload it into Phoenix. When the borg collective was asked why they couldn’t just print their own reports out of Phoenix, the borg’s reply was that the system that is designed to collect the information has no method of disseminating that same information. You would think with nearly a hundred people in that division, they could find a way to extract information already reported to them.

Why do they call the program Phoenix? Because the useless program requires routine resurrection from the crash and burn ashes with what it cannot effectively do.

3) Mary “the lizard” Roberts and Tonto were alleged to have been slapped around a bit for giving flippant answers to judges

4) The Borg collective has determined that the Strategic Evaluation Committee, the committee formed to deflect criticisms away from the AOC while it evaluates them should have their recommendations forthcoming by next summer. This will allow the AOC to live through several more rounds of anticipated budget cuts unscathed while trial courts continue to be decimated well into next fiscal year.

Of course the California Trial Lawyers Association (whoops, that was their slime name of yesteryear…) the Consumer Attorneys of California are still beating drums looking for the trial courts to spend all their reserves before they go to the legislature hat-in-hand.

What will occur when these legislative aides point to the elephant in the room that our dear trial lawyers are ignoring? Shame on the trial lawyers and the bar.

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Judge Katherine Feinstein released this letter to the AOC yesterday.

More on the letter from Maria Dinzeo of Courthouse News – San Francisco PJ slams bureaucrats on crisis.

Based on this letter, we must be counting non-business days in our countdown. We have 24 days left and Judge Feinstein has 38 days left. October 3 is dismantling day.  Will the legislature act upon AOC’s funding before it is too late and save court jobs?

Judge Feinstein’s letter does well to also explain that not only are workers being let go but management is also being let go.

What has us curious is this mandatory reserves the  JC requires each court to maintain.

If you can add anything to the above, we are interested in hearing from you.

Posted in: Administrative Office of the Courts, Judicial Council of California, Trial Courts