When Chief Justice Mini-Mimi announced the formation of the Strategic Evaluation Committee we were nonplussed. It only took a basic glance at most of the committee members to realize that the committee membership consists of seasoned Judicial Council insiders, cheerleaders and quite a few conflicted members who are expecting things from the AOC, like new courthouses. These people represented quite a few more than the simple majority required to push recommendations out of the committee on a simple majority vote. Then again, Bill Vickrey knew this when he appointed them. It was all just part of the plan.
Chief Justice Mini-Mimi is sitting on a plethora of survey responses taken by the California Judges Association with pertinent commentary that would be an ample guide for any true leader to mandate and manage change. She’s ignoring it all or making slight adjustments to the window dressing, like expanding public comment, yet not repealing the rules on prior restraint of speech by having to submit comments in advance for approval. Additionally, Chief Justice Mini-Mimi is sitting on survey results she directly commissioned from the trial courts that would also serve as an ample guide for any true leader. Since those comments weren’t getting any better and were headed in a downhill direction from the California Judges Associations survey results, appointing a committee to present a more positive interpreted response of thousands of other survey responses was essential. The larger the cross-section of survey respondents, the less intimidating the gantt charts look.
The surveys themselves were based on a few push questions. For the most part, these push questions assumed that the AOC must continue to exist in its current form, identify what valuable services were provided and what services the AOC could improve upon. To understand how these survey results are to be assessed is that a statistical analysis will be made of the survey respondents. In many cases, survey respondents may not answer a question due to any myriad of reasons and those views can’t be accurately reflected in any report.
Now about the electronic survey: The electronic survey system was a service provided by the National Center for State Courts. Survey systems such as this have rather sophisticated dashboards that collects enough information about the survey respondent by tying the email name together with an encoded ID in the URL that no claim of anonymity of the survey itself we would consider credible without viewing the survey software dashboard settings. These survey systems can produce raw reports of survey responses for import into a spreadsheet, including or excluding various information the system itself collects. There are savvy people out there that could have easily picked up on this aspect of the survey, would have passed the word around and lots of people wouldn’t have completed the survey as a result. I don’t believe that anyone believes that the AOC hands the National Center for State Courts around or more than a million dollars a year and expects impartial results. In fact, in various press stories where NCSC was describing what ails California’s courts, it is legislative budget cuts which is carrying the ball as the paid mouthpiece line of the AOC.
We also heard through the grapevine that this committee is about as far from transparent as we can expect because they are all sworn to secrecy by non-disclosure agreements.
These results will be analyzed over the course of the next year?
In a recent meeting, Justice Scotland opined that his Strategic Evaluation Committees work would conclude about a year from now. The survey results were instantaneous. Reports can be run on those survey results and they can be analyzed for recommendations as to how to adjust the AOC to better serve the trial courts, yet in this broad survey, for the most part the answers to push questions will serve to justify the existing organization as it exists over the course of the next 12 months at minimum.
Mark our words: The AOC will exist nearly intact in its current form with only a small dip in employment levels caused by terminations and retirements as of September 1st of next year. As of September 1st of next year, we’re estimating that the trial courts will have shed some 1200-1400 jobs statewide, closing courtrooms and shutting down access to the justice system in favor of building new courthouses. Courthouses that will serve most Judicial Council Members and Strategic Evaluation Committee members because the majorities are all conflicted.
Once a report is created, which may or may not include a copy of the raw survey results, this report will be handed to Justice Richard “Darth Vader” Huffman’s Accountability & Efficiency Committee for a bit more scrutiny over the results and recommendations to be presented to the executive & planning committee. Once at E&P, it will get a bit more scrutiny from E&P before being forwarded to the Judicial Council to accept the report in January or February of 2013.
This entire process is being undertaken to carry us past the next election season without any substantial change in the Judicial Council or the AOC. It is all an effort to buy time with the rest of the judicial branch and the legislature during this and the next legislative session. Maybe you will have forgotten everything that has happened thus far, given another 18 months or so while there remains no substantive change in governance or direction. This is Chief Justice Mini-Mimi’s and Justice Richard “Darth Vader” Huffman’s and Bill “Hi-ho Silver” Vickrey’s grand plan to ensure that no punitive legislative actions are forthcoming because the Judicial Council is addressing the concerns as only an independent branch of government ought to. After all, some 80+% of CJA survey respondents did indicate that the judicial branch should solve their own problems, even when they are made unsolvable by the small insular handful of judicial branch insiders that have run the Judicial Council for the last 15 or so years……
The other part of the plan is to buy enough time for the trial attorneys to convince the legislature that the courts should indeed be run from the top down with the Judicial Council and the AOC running the whole show. The Judicial Council and AOC’s hands will be sanitized by thousands of attorneys advocating on their behalf in an effort to get greater judicial branch funding, regardless of other circumstances.
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Unrelated
From Cal Bar Journal: Budget Cuts hit home
http://www.calbarjournal.com/August2011/TopHeadlines/TH5.aspx
From the New York Times:
As Budgets Continue to Shrink, the Lines Will Grow in California Civil Courts
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/us/24courts.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=us
Judicial Council Watcher 
007
August 25, 2011
Wow, did you really need to add the soft-core porn to this post?
Judicial Council Watcher
August 25, 2011
-corrected. It was the song we were looking for.-
Wendy Darling
August 25, 2011
Published today, Thursday, August 25, from Courthouse News Service, by Maria Dinzeo:
California’s Presiding Judges Chart New Course, Toss Staff From Room
By MARIA DINZEO
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/25/39289.htm
Apparently the Presiding Judges have figured out that they don’t need to wait a year for the SEC to identify what is wrong at 455 Golden Gate Avenue – they already know.
Long live the ACJ.
Wendy Darling
August 25, 2011
Also published today, Thursday, August 25, from Courthouse News Service, by Bill Girdner, and, as always from Girdner, well worth the read:
Twilight Zone
By BILL GIRDNER
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/25/39282.htm
Long live the ACJ.
Nathaniel Woodhull
August 25, 2011
Nice to see that more and more people are finally standing up and taking notice of what we have been complaining about since around 2003. Minnie-Me’s Playbook is woefully out of date. She keeps calling the same plays and now her team is continually getting stuffed at the line.
Individual meetings are taking place between PJ’s and legislators. The Alliance Board members have also met with legislators. It seems that our Assembly Members and Senators are “getting it”. Hopefully, we will soon see a budget package allocated to the Judicial Branch that insists that 98% of the monies funded to the branch go directly to the Trial Courts. That, or a flat dollar amount that may be allocated to the AOC would take care of many of the problems we have now. Personally, I’d like to see the AOC budget cut back to what it was in 1996,
Keep the pressure on!!!
unionman575
August 25, 2011
It’s time for the AOC to get its budget hacked.
lando
August 25, 2011
Well intended as J Scotland is , it should not take another year to identify the bloat and waste in the AOC. The judicial education division could be reduced to 25 employees from 100. The Office of General Counsel could be reduced from 64 to 32. All consultants can be thanked and relieved of duty. The ” Scholars in Residence Program ” can be eliminated. Paying the National Center for State Courts approximately 500,000 a year can be terminated. Additional real savings can be achieved by eliminating all 4 overpaid “Regional Managers” who have no authority to manage constitutionally elected trial court judges. Mr Overholt’s former position did not exist for many years and could be eliminated as well. Trial courts have run successfully in California for many decades without any or all of the above. As usual General Woodhull is spot on as the cutbacks I have outlined would take the AOC back to a mid 1990’s budget which would in turn save the trial courts who do the real work of serving the public day in and day out.
Trixie Norton
August 27, 2011
Scotland is an establishment guy, and friend of the Chief. It is not in his DNA to accept that the AOC is broken from the ground up. His survey begins with the tacit assumption that the AOC should and will exist in pretty much its current form. It’s like sending a guy who needs a heart transplant to a liposuction clinic for a consult. The most Scotland will recommend is
a tummy tuck and maybe toss in some wart removal.
Really, though, Scotland’s committee is irrelevant, as are all of the chief’s cross-pollinated committees. Change will not come through committees, but because of hard work, relentless truth-telling,and ultimately, through the legislature.
A word of warning: Never let this fight be portrayed as a left/right issue. It isn’t. It can’t be. It shouldn’t be.
Remember when a new group formed, called the ACJ? The AOC first sought to erroneously paint them as a right wing group angry at Ron George’s marriage decision. When that failed, they called them a leftist cabal carrying water for the labor unions. They need to LABEL opponents in order to immediately, and by definition, divide their opponents.
truth is, that group has ZERO to do with left/right politics–always has, always will. That is the reason the group has been able to attract huge numbers of judges of all persuasions from across the state.
Whether those of us in this fight individually identify as progressives or conservatives or whatever, that is NOT part of this fight. To all those terms to even enter the conservation is to reduce our numbers. It seems to me that this fight is about truth, accountability, the rule of law, whether judges or bureaucrats ought to set policy, and fiscal sanity. If those things have become right or left issues, we are in trouble. This fight has natural constituents ALL across the political spectrum–conservatives dislike top-down, bloated bureaucracies. Progressives love labor unions. On and and on.
There are roughly an equal number of conservative and liberal judges in this state. We need them all. We need Republican and Democratic legislators. We can never divide ourselves. Our opponents are more than willing to assist us in that endeavor. We must simply see ourselves as compatriots in a necessary fight, and go out and win it.
Judicial Council Watcher
August 28, 2011
This fight is indeed about DEMOCRACY, truth, accountability, the rule of law, whether judges or bureaucrats ought to set policy & fiscal sanity. Since we’re not politicians reliant on corporate or union donations, we’re not obliged to serve or sponsor the message of either constituency.
We serve the constituency of common sense – the people – the judiciary, the workers, the citizens, the taxpayers – be they progressive or conservative – with messages that anyone can embrace.
1. No one is or should be above the law.
2. There is a better way to spend scarce public funds.
3. There is no shame in doing the right thing, contrary to what the
Judicial Council and the AOC wish everyone to believe.
Wendy Darling
August 27, 2011
Very well said, Trixie Norton.
Long live the ACJ.
tony maino
August 28, 2011
I am a member but not a Director of the ACJ so these comments are mine and not theirs.
Yes, well said Trixie Norton. The ACJ has zero to do with right/left, north-south, big court/little court politics. Whether Hamilton Meats is correctly or incorrectly decided is of zero concern to us.
Although it appears that the style of leadership we have is one that forms cross-pollinated committees I am not willing to think that Justice Scotland will only do a tummy tuck on the AOC. He has personally been disregarded by a puffed up AOC bureaucrat. He has not received any public support from the CJ when he took this bureaucrat to task. He will not forget this. I suspect that his support for her has its limits and that these limits have been reached.
Also, he will not be able to ignore the results of the survey. I do not believe he will cover for the AOC.
Judicial Council Watcher
August 28, 2011
The AOC is probably in the process of changing the way it does business. Senate Bill 92 (http://e-lobbyist.com/gaits/text/342932) and the new proposed Judicial Branch contracting Manual memo (http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/082611item6.pdf) both reference that a complete list of consultants, contractors, what they’re paid and what they’re doing for the judicial branch (including the AOC) be submitted to the legislature by February 1 of 2012 and thereafter every six months only for contracts amended or entered into after October 1, 2011.
God forbid they be more transparent and report every contract!!
The lizard’s recommendations can be found on page 10-
Page 10.
4. Reporting requirements
The Judicial Branch Contract Law imposes mandatory reporting requirements on all judicial branch entities, and applies to all contracts subject to the new law, including contracts resulting from noncompetitively bid procurements. The Judicial Council is required to provide the first semiannual report to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee and the State Auditor by February 1, 2012, for the period ending December 31, 2011. Because the new law’s substantive provisions apply to contracts entered into or amended by judicial branch entities on or after October 1, 2011, the first Judicial Council report will cover the three-month period of October 1, 2011, through December 31, 2011.
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So if you are the AOC and you issue a ten million dollar multi-year sole-source contract before October 1, 2011 to your sister, there is no requirement to report it or any other contracting activity that some may deem questionable to anyone, yet we’re all aware it is and will be ongoing.
That’s the reason that Judge McCormick and Justice Scotland won’t be getting their answers because it will be held to test against another less egregious list to be reported to the legislature on Feb 1. The whole list is to be collected by Justice Vader’s committee and will be available ‘some time on October’ to his committee. We don’t believe this list will ever see sunshine.
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We intend to continuously analyze these documents with the intent of doing a separate post on them.
Wendy Darling
August 28, 2011
We are all hoping that you are right in your assessment that Justice Scotland won’t cover for the AOC, Judge Maino. But that hope is very thin, given the track record of those who do the bidding of the Chief Justice, both past and present. Lies, misrepresentations, ethical violations, and cover-up of misconduct, to the highest levels at the AOC, have been the order of the day for quite some time, all of which have been protected, if not ratified, by the Office of the Chief Justice – again, both with HRH Ron George, and now with Teflon Tani. Those abuses and misconduct continue to this day, especially in the AOC’s HR Division.
And it seems to some of us that the manipulation of Justice Scotland and the SEC is already taking place, given that nothing apparently will even come out the SEC until sometime next year. Not even an interim report. As usual, anything released will be delayed, delayed, delayed, probably well past any budget discussions in Sacramento, and then parsed out, word-smithed, and sanitized by the OGC. Telling the truth is simply not practiced or welcomed at 455 Golden Gate Avenue, especially the higher up you go.
So, we will see if Justice Scotland will be truthful about the information and findings of the SEC and not cover for the AOC, or, more accurately, if Justice Scotland and the SEC will be allowed to be truthful and not cover for the AOC.
Long live the ACJ.
courtflea
August 31, 2011
Justice Scotland’s abilities aside, I heard that the filling out of the survey was so difficult and subjective (not a professionally prepared survey) that I suspect that once the results are in, compiling the data in any meaningful way will be next to impossible. Therefore, no results, more time wasted. So what is new on any AOC committee?