Sounds like an absurd premise and yet in California’s judicial branch it is an absurd public policy. While California is mired in debt and has an unfunded pension liability that’s about half of the states’ annual budget, while draconian cuts directed at the house of (George) fraud, waste, abuse and public corruption that is the AOC have been passed down to the trial courts, while a few dozen perfectly suitable courthouses have been shut down across the state with a corresponding courtroom count that exceeds all of the courtrooms being built everywhere, while the AOC’s Office of Court Construction & Management has demonstrated beyond any rational argument that they can’t do anything affordably, while the unfunded maintenance liability grows by an additional 250 million over last year (see link, page 7) while the total stands at a staggering 1.5 billion dollars – and nearly 2 billion dollars when you factor in unfunded renewals.
How many millions of dollars were spent on courthouses the local courts closed because they couldn’t afford to staff them?
Yet we’re building more of them of a far more sophisticated design that be much costlier to operate with their living roofs, flat roofs in snow country that rely on roof heaters and mid-rise buildings identified as being the most prone to collapse in earthquakes being built between two fault lines. (San Bernardino)
In the great scheme of things, we have to believe that all of this money not spent on current courthouses is to force them to degrade and shut down so that the OCCM can take images of courts in a poor state of disrepair . This permits them to hold their hand out for more money and more power in the form of new trial courts – for those that march in lock step like good little soldiers. Meanwhile, the AOC has apparently limited its expenses to the court facilities payments it receives and whatever it can bill to other 1732 or 1407 projects – or the local court – or others.
The point of all of this is that court construction and maintenance is and always was the larger albatross than CCMS, it’s just that CCMS was more easily identifiable as such. For years, most promised courthouses never thought to ask if the price was fair, reasonable or even a suitable public expense. The Ministry of Truth wants you to believe it – but when several courthouses shut down for every one multi-million dollar courthouse built, when O’Malley is touting the benefits of court construction while our court system is gutted, is that responsible advocacy?
Do you really think Brad Hill knows shit about building courthouses or what they should cost – or even cares?
Is it fair to ask taxpayers to drive 150 miles round trip to take care of a traffic ticket and then slam them with court construction fees and court security fees? Is it fair that counties continue maintenance of effort payments when the AOC makes no efforts to maintain?
When does the madness end?
Please comment on court construction as vigorously as you did for the SEC report. The courtroom you save by doing so could be your own.
Related Articles
Construction Proposal Invitation to Comment
unionman575
August 16, 2012
Outstanding work JCW!
😉
unionman575
August 16, 2012
OCCMComments@jud.ca.gov
Wendy Darling
August 16, 2012
The Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, the Pennsylvania Courts & Cash for Kids, Penn State University and Jerry Sandusky, the San Diego Sweetwater Unified School District and Southwest Community College District, the California DMV, Caltrans, the California Department of Parks & Recreation, and many others . . . all infected by fraud and corruption. All subjected to law enforcement investigations for fraud and corruption.
But not the AOC and the administration of the California Judicial Branch. The law really doesn’t apply to them. They really can do whatever they want, with impunity. They really are immune from accountablity.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that the AOC and Judicial Branch Administration are selling courthouses. They sold out justice in California quite some time ago. Courthouses are no longer needed. Just the cash.
Long live the ACJ.
unionman575
August 16, 2012
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/Judicial-Branch-Facilities-Program-Oversight.pdf
unionman575
August 16, 2012
And the AOC building boom goes on and on…
http://www.acgov.org/gsa_app/gsa/purchasing/bid_content/contractingdetail.jsp?BID_ID=1291
😉
unionman575
August 16, 2012
And on and on…
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/occm_2011-12_solicitation_schedule.pdf
unionman575
August 16, 2012
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/68106-napa-20120814-July-11-revision.pdf
Michael Paul
August 17, 2012
The page 7 that is of particular interest in the initial post is an admission of epic failure.
Up the right hand side of this bar graph is a green “response scale”. If they were good public stewards of these public assets, they would strive to be in that 5% to 15% that they themselves term “comprehensive stewardship” at the top of the chart.
Either the green or the yellow bar graphs represent they’re doing things like preventive maintenance to prevent systems from falling apart.
The bar graph to the left does not have a speck of green or yellow in it, yellow of which would represent “managed care”.
All of that red represents “crisis management”
To best convey how this works with a real life analogy: Tomorrow, you purchase a new car. You pledge to not lift a finger towards its maintenance.
The only thing you do is put gas in it and drive.
You never change the oil, rotate tires, replace tires, replace brake pads, coolants, belts, transmission fluid or even wash the car.
Assuming that like a courthouse, you need to get 50,000 miles per year of hard-driving use out of this car. For the sake of comparison, this car is used as a San Francisco taxicab.
How long will your car last until you can’t drive it anymore?
How long will these buildings last that are falling apart around you because some people put a bigger priority on giving favored pets new courthouses?
As JCW says, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
unionman575
August 17, 2012
Well said MIchael.
😉
Michael Paul
August 17, 2012
Using their own definition from page 6:
Crisis Response – Building components and equipment are routinely broken and inoperative. Wear and tear continues unabated. Preventive maintenance is no longer performed and response is limited to emergencies.