March 18, 2013
Dear Members and Others,
The attached articles deal with two subjects that are inexorably intertwined. The first by Courthouse News reporter, Maria Dinzeo, recounts the fact that the Chief Justice has reappointed three current members to the Judicial Council. The second article, by The Recorder’s Cheryl Miller, details a recent legislative hearing that focused on the money-sucking Long Beach Courthouse.
These two issues must be viewed in the larger context of a dysfunctional form of branch governance and the lack of a real system of checks and balances.
Reappointing the same judges/justices who have failed to appropriately oversee the bloated and entrenched bureaucracy is not a recipe for success. Rather, it is history repeating itself. We have not found a single instance when any of these three re-appointed members has voted against an AOC staff recommendation. They have fallen in lock-step with the other appointees who supported the failed CCMS project and repeatedly overlooked wasteful spending on court construction and maintenance. Recently each joined in rejecting the Chief Justice’s Strategic Evaluation Committee’s recommendation to end telecommuting for central office staff.
And that history brings us to the second article concerning the Long Beach Courthouse.
The Alliance has obtained an un-redacted copy of the building and maintenance contract that has left the judiciary on the hook for $2.3 billion over the next 35 years. We looked high and we looked low in an effort to learn who entered into this agreement where the construction/maintenance company bore zero risk. We can tell you that NO local court officials inked this deal. The bureaucrats from the AOC own this debacle from A to Z.
The Legislative Analyst correctly observed that the Long Beach project would go way over budget. That same Legislative Analyst had presciently warned that CCMS had not been properly vetted and was in danger of failing. Again the warnings have been ignored. And who suffers for these blunders? Certainly not those who entered into these contracts from the central office or the Council members who have repeatedly failed to rein them in. Instead the price is paid by every trial court in this state that is forced to layoff critically needed staff, close courtrooms and courthouses, make do with unsafe and overcrowded facilities, and shorten business hours for the public seeking redress.
Last week the Chief Justice addressed both houses of the Legislature. In her remarks she observed: “Structurally” the judicial branch was “reborn a mere 16 years ago.” Later in referring to the branch as “16 years young” she went on to say, “Like any adolescent it needs a check-in.” The Alliance would go one step further in this analogy: What adult in their right mind would give a 16-year-old carte blanche to spend over three billion dollars a year and not expect bad decision making and wasteful spending?
As we did with the CCMS fiasco, the Alliance is asking for the Legislature — which appropriated these monies the AOC and Judicial Council have so badly mismanaged — to direct respected State Auditor Elaine Howle to conduct an audit of the construction and maintenance programs overseen by the AOC. We caution the legislature not to be misled into thinking that the AOC-commissioned Pegasus report is comparable to a real independent audit, any more than were AOC-sponsored reports on CCMS. It is not. What is needed is an independent evaluation, just as was done with CCMS.
Finally, we thank State Senator Loni Hancock for shining the light on the Long Beach Court financing debacle by holding a public meeting. Senator Hancock’s question to AOC staff: “How did you let this happen?” — referencing the apparent belief by branch leaders that the State General Fund would pay for this behemoth — harkens eerily back to the days when our branch leaders and AOC staff attempted to shift responsibility for the concept of CCMS onto past Governors. Nonsense.
Directors, Alliance of California Judges
__________________________________________________
Courthouse News Service
3/15/2012
California Chief Reappoints Three to Council
By MARIA DINZEO
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye made a round of reappointments to the Judicial Council this week, the policy making body for the courts which she heads.
The reappointments are of a long-time member and two fairly recent appointees; Associate Supreme Court Justice Marvin Baxter, Justice Douglas Miller and Judge Emilie Elias of Los Angeles. Each will now sit on the council for at least three more years.
Both Baxter and Miller chair powerful internal committees, Baxter the council’s legislative policy committee and Miller its Executive and Planning Committee. Miller joined the council in 2010; Baxter in 1996, also the year he became head of the legislative committee. Elias sits on the Trial Court Funding Working Group, a committee of judges and government officials currently evaluating how the courts should be funded.
The reappointments by the chief justice come in the midst of a campaign by a reform group of judges who are pushing for the democratic election of council members. They argue that a council made up mostly of the chief’s appointees is unlikely to exercise judgment independent of the courts’ central bureaucracy that works under the chief.
All three of the council members who were reappointed are in policy hot seats.
Baxter chairs the Policy Liaison and Policy Committee that endorses proposals for legislation such as a recent trailer bill proposing a host of additional fees to the public, including a prohibitive fee to search public court records that was criticized in the state Senate this week.
Elias is a member of a group that is charged with evaluating how funding is distributed by the Judicial Council to individual trial courts, a subject of contention and concerns that some courts with close ties to the administrative office are favored in that allocation.
Miller chairs the committee that is supposed to put into effect a list of reforms of the Administrative Office of the Courts recommended by a committee of judges that spent a year looking into the bureaucracy criticized for waste of funds, mishandling of a defunct statewide computer project and a “culture of control” that left no say for the state’s independent trial judges. Miller has also opened some formerly closed council meetings to the public and started sending council judges on visits to local courts.
The campaign calling for a democratic shake-up of the council has been led by the Alliance of California Judges who say the council members do not represent the interests of the state’s trial judges and that elections would hold them accountable to their peers. For example, the council recently and unanimously endorsed telecommuting by the central bureaucrats, despite opposition from the head of the committee that made the reform recommendations, from the presiding judges committee, from the Alliance and from the California Judges Association.
Alliance judges have pointed to that decision and many before it in criticizing the council’s pattern of unanimous decisions that follow the recommendations from the administrative office on policies that affect the courts.
“Over the last 15 years, under this dysfunctional form of governance, we have witnessed the doubling in size of the central bureaucracy, the wasting of over $500 million dollars on a failed computer system, the granting of overly generous pension perks to the 30 top paid AOC bureaucrats, the allowance of ‘telecommuting privileges’ to high paid central office staff–including supervisors, and wasteful construction and maintenance projects, just to name a few,” Gilliard said.
“In that same time period we have never witnessed a single instance where these hand picked Council members have ever turned down an AOC staff recommendation,” she pointed out. “That fact alone should be a great cause of concern and a rallying cry for reform in light of the historical track record of mismanagement, bloat, and waste.”
__________________________________________________
The Recorder
Capital Accounts: Long Beach Lands AOC in Woodshed
Cheryl Miller
2013-03-15 12:53:06 PM
SACRAMENTO — State Senator Loni Hancock is not usually given to verbal fireworks. But the typically mild-mannered Berkeley Democrat did not hide her anger with judicial leaders Thursday as she publicly quizzed the Administrative Office of the Courts about the Long Beach courthouse financing fiasco.
“My question is, to the AOC: How did you let this happen?” Hancock asked, her voice bubbling with exasperation.
The Senate budget subcommittee hearing provided the first real legislative grilling the AOC has received over the controversial project. And it probably marked the final nail in the coffin for judicial hopes that lawmakers will change their minds and cough up state money for the Long Beach building.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office recently concluded that the judicial branch may overpay by $160 million for the new courthouse because it relied on overly rosy projections when penciling out costs for the untested public-private financing deal.
“It turned out that the LAO’s projections were correct,” Hancock said at Thursday’s hearing.
Branch leaders assumed the state general fund would pick up the average $60 million annual payment for the building, even though a contract with the private construction consortium never specified what public entity would ultimately cover the tab. When lawmakers and the governor quashed those expectations last year, the Judicial Council was forced to shelve four other courthouse projects planned for Los Angeles, Fresno, Nevada and Sacramento counties to free up enough internal construction money for Long Beach.
“I frankly think that every [court with a] courthouse that is delayed because of this ought to raise some questions,” Hancock said.
AOC officials, however, wouldn’t concede that they made any mistakes with the Long Beach courthouse, which will ultimately cost $2.3 billion over the life of the contract.
“I’m not sure this was letting anything happen,” said Curtis Child, the AOC’s chief operating officer. “We’re still quite confident … this is a bargain for the state.”
Asked by Hancock if the branch had learned any lessons from the financial deal’s shortcomings, Child said it was too early to say, that an evaluation of the building’s quality after the life of the contract might be the best measure. Hancock pointedly noted that neither she nor Child is likely to be active in state government in 35 years.
“It’s not going to be particularly helpful,” she said.
Hancock instead said she’d push for language in this year’s budget that would stop state entities from using “unsubstantiated assumptions” when trying to justify public-private partnership, or “P3” deals.
“We really can’t be careless with one public dollar when we’re closing courthouses,” she said.
Any such statutory restrictions may not affect the judiciary, which apparently has decided to stick to traditional construction financing methods in the future.
“We don’t anticipate doing any more P3 projects,” Child told the subcommittee on Thursday.
_______________________________________________
From the desk of JCW:
Things that make you go “hmmmmm…..”
The Southern Regional Office in Burbank is downsizing again. While they spent a load of cash building out an additional server room and the rest of the first floor (the secret floor courts weren’t privy to…) before they ended the lease and gave the space back. They’re now downsizing the 2nd floor, mostly occupied by the AOC. In the AOC’s infinite wisdom of bestowing honors upon the living that some might consider villainous characters in this ongoing saga, they named the conference rooms in SRO “The Sheila Calabro Conference Center” upon her retirement to honor her. (No, I am not kidding!)
Part of this downsizing of SRO has to do with doing away with the part of the floor hosting the Sheila Calabro Conference Center…. (Ah….hahahaha… rent-a-dedication..) Shocked and amazed that the AOC would do away with such a critical part of SRO, Sheila is alleged to have requested the following……
____________________________
From: B-M M.
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2013
Subject: Sheila Calabro Conference Center Plaque
Good Morning,
When Sheila heard the conference center was being demolished, she said she wanted the items signifying the Sheila Calabro Conference Center. I was able to take down her picture and resolution, but not the plaque and I noticed when I walked in this morning that the plaque is gone. If you have it can you please bring it to my office. Thanks so much.
_____________________________
Now we don’t know if the rumor is true that someone has video of this plaque being tossed upon a beach bonfire or the other rumor is true about a video of it laying across the metro tracks or even the third rumor is true that it was rushed to claim by Ms. Calabro but if you could update the rumor mill and get on the same page, it might be helpful in telling our readers what really happened to the plaque.
And if there really is video – don’t tell us about it, let us post it!
_____________________________
More of that “hmmmmm….”
He’s the presiding judge of Yolo county. He’s a judicial council member. He sits on the litigation management committee for the judicial council – the judges and justices who sit in an effort to manage the litigation against the branch – like the recent appeal of the Emily Gallup case. He has awards for himself posted on his website before they’re presented….
Presiding Judge Dave Rosenberg Robocall May 2012 apparently to every resident in Yolo County.
Public Utilities Code that applies to this call
PUC 2873. Automatic dialing-announcing devices may be used to place calls over telephone lines only pursuant to a prior agreement between the persons involved, whereby the person called has agreed that he or she consents to receive such calls from the person calling, or as specified in Section 2874.
PUC 2874. (a) Whenever telephone calls are placed through the use of an automatic dialing-announcing device, the device may be operated only after an unrecorded, natural voice announcement has been made to theperson called by the person calling. The announcement shall do all of the following:
(1) State the nature of the call and the name, address, and telephone number of the business or organization being represented, if any.
(2) Inquire as to whether the person called consents to hear the prerecorded message of the person calling.
_______________________________________________
Canon of Judicial Ethics that applies to this call
CANON 5
A JUDGE OR JUDICIAL CANDIDATE* SHALL REFRAIN FROM INAPPROPRIATE POLITICAL ACTIVITY
Judges are entitled to entertain their personal views on political questions. They are not required to surrender their rights or opinions as citizens. They shall, however, avoid political activity that may create the appearance of political bias or impropriety. Judicial independence and impartiality should dictate the conduct of judges and candidates* for judicial office.
Now if the CJP wasn’t Big Dave’s bitch, do you think they might have something to say about content in light of the coincidence that Clint Parish being prosecuted in State Bar Court for said mailer? What are the odds that sitting on the all-powerful litigation management committee someone might be actually managing litigation and sending a chilling message to attorneys of “don’t take us on – or risk disbarment….”
courtflea
March 18, 2013
The rumor I heard is that the plaque was found during an examination after Sheila was hospitalized with complaints of severe constipation
Wendy Darling
March 18, 2013
You just can’t make this stuff up. Really.
Long live the ACJ.
Alan Ernesto Phillips
March 18, 2013
The rumor in Shasta, County d’Jahr, is the plaque was just smelted into an ACTUAL Jack H Halpin Award – to be bestowed upon the Kudo Kollecting Klan (K.K.K.) Grand Mason-Dragon herself…
unionman575
March 19, 2013
Sounds nice!
😉
JusticeCalifornia
March 18, 2013
“Last week the Chief Justice addressed both houses of the Legislature. In her remarks she observed: “Structurally” the judicial branch was “reborn a mere 16 years ago.” Later in referring to the branch as “16 years young” she went on to say, “Like any adolescent it needs a check-in.” The Alliance would go one step further in this analogy: What adult in their right mind would give a 16-year-old carte blanche to spend over three billion dollars a year and not expect bad decision making and wasteful spending?”
Indeed. Query– What in recent judicial branch history would inspire the Governor and Legislature to entrust the Office of the Chief Justice and her tiny not-very-successful/bright-or -experienced handpicked minions with over $3 billion in public funds?
The OBT
March 18, 2013
I have written before that Long Beach will become the next CCMS. Nice to see Senator Hancock pressing the AOC as to how they got into this mess. As posted earlier the CJ’s comments about the branch being ” reborn ” 16 years ago are very troubling. Many would argue that the California courts worked just fine serving their local communities, with local funding prior to Ron George showing up. Now we can see Ron George’s legacy is one of closed courthouses, reduced service to the public, massive layoffs and billions of wasted taxpayer dollars. None of this happened prior to the judicial branch being ” reborn” 16 years ago. One last point. I have to disagree with the Alliance on J Baxter. J Baxter is an excellent Justice and I believe he urged then CJ George not to close down the courts during the forced furloughs. We don’t always know what goes on behind the scenes but J Baxter has perspective and experience that can only be helpful in moving the branch forward.
MaxRebo5
March 19, 2013
I don’t know Justice Baxter and like that some of you feel he is a good man on a personal level. That said, where has he been as a leader in court administration? Where were his no votes on the Judicial Council? I’ve never heard him speaking out to have the AOC cut deeper or the SEC Report implemented differently? Did he vote to reform the AOC telecommute policy (a total softball issue)? As I recall that was a unanimous vote to continue to allow telecommuting by 40% of AOC staff.
My point is the JC is full of socially gifted people. You don’t get to top jobs without some people skills. The problem is if the current members do have independent voices they aren’t using them when it counts which is on JC votes. Baxter by his silence for so long and his votes on the JC is a part of the problem in my opinion
Perhaps Baxter would have chosen a different course if he was selected as Chief as Lando said but that didn’t happen and is just a hypothetical situation. The reality is Cantil became the Chief and Baxter has not publicly opposed the new Chief ever to say important things like, “I think the AOC needs to be cut more to avoid further cuts to the trial courts.” He should have done that if he really cared for the public’s access to justice and for basic fairness in leaders feeling the pain of these cuts first before line staff. Far as I can tell he is voting how the Chief says so the branch has one voice. That’s not working too well for the branch.
There is a price for these members going along and it is a loss of their personal credibility. In Baxter’s case he is responsible for proposing a $10 fee on the press to see court records. That’s not leadership. To me that idea is crazy talk. Such a horrible idea should have been shot down in Baxter’s subcommittee but instead it was endorsed and sent on as new legislation sponsored by the JC. Baxter owns that bad idea now and it joins a string of bad ideas from two Chiefs. He’s got serious work to do to get some credibility after all these messes. The time for quietly tring to reform the branch from within and from behind the scenes has long past.
Lando
March 18, 2013
OBT I agree with you about Justice Baxter. If either Justice Baxter or Justice Corrigan had been elevated to the position of Chief Justice I doubt we would be in the mess we are in now. Both Baxter and Corrigan are smart, independent and humble. I think both would have opened the doors to dissenting points of view and not arrogantly ignored the now close to 500 members of the ACJ. History will show that Ronald George wanted his legacy preserved at all costs and he found a willing shill in our current CJ. The result ? The sad undermining of our once strong and proud branch of government.
unionman575
March 19, 2013
A shill? I love that!
unionman575
March 19, 2013
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/19/55845.htm
Tuesday, March 19, 2013Last Update: 8:29 AM PT
Los Angeles Superior Court Cuts Staff and Resources to the Bone
By MATT REYNOLDS
LOS ANGELES (CN) – Los Angeles Superior Court will close eight courthouses and slash hundreds of jobs to cut the last $85 million from its $195 million budget shortfall for this fiscal year.
The court announced its restructuring plan Friday. It said it already has cut $110 million from its annual budget but needs to cut $85 million more by the end of the fiscal year, June 30.
The Superior Court has cut 511 jobs and consolidated courts. It will relocate criminal, traffic, juvenile, small claims, eviction disputes, and civil collections to other courts.
Personal injury, probate cases and some civil cases will be heard only at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown.
Some civil trials will now be heard in dedicated county trial courts.
State funding cuts left the county court system with an annual $195 million budget shortfall.
The court said in a statement that the 511 job cuts would bring its workforce reduction over the past four years to 24 percent. The $110 million already cut constituted more than 15 percent of its discretionary budget.
But the remaining $85 million shortfall forced the court to swing the ax again.
Presiding Judge David Wesley said the court has “lived up to its promise” to provide full-service courts throughout the county, but the courts “no longer have the resources to do so.”
“We are now being forced by budget cuts to make changes that will disadvantage litigants, attorneys, justice system partners and all court users across the spectrum and across our court,” Wesley said in a statement.
The judge called the consolidations the court’s “day of reckoning” and a “last ditch effort to save access to justice in Los Angeles County.”
“The result will be reduced services, long lines and travel distances that may well deter people from seeking and getting the justice they deserve. It is a sad irony that as our economy is turning the corner our justice system is going downhill,” Wesley said.
The restructuring plan was approved by the court’s budget committee, supervising judges and court executives.
More than 50 judges and staff made the decisions on job cuts and court closures after five months spent looking at alternatives, the court said.
As courthouses across the state count their pennies, Californians will feel the pain.
Closures in San Bernardino mean litigants will have to travel an additional 130 miles.
Fresno Superior Court will operate courthouses only in the city of Fresno.
Los Angeles County courthouses will close at Beacon Street, Huntington Park, Kenyon Juvenile, Malibu, Pomona North, San Pedro, West Los Angeles and Whittier, and most court work will be removed from Beverly Hills and Catalina.
The county will also wave goodbye to an alternative dispute resolution center, cut court reporters and lay off all juvenile referees, the court announced.
“Justice requires a court,” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said in her annual State of the Judiciary speech. “But what we once counted on – that courts would be open, available and ready to dispense prompt justice – no longer exists in California.”
Community groups sued the Superior Court last week, for cutting access to eviction hearing courthouses. The federal lawsuit claimed the court’s action “shuts the courthouse doors on many of the county’s most vulnerable residents.”
Community members, lawyers and court workers rallied outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse last Thursday to protest the closures, staging a mock trial to highlight the impact of the cuts.
“We’re going to do everything we can to stop these closures, because if the judges have their way, we’re the ones who will be left behind,” SEIU Local 721 President Bob Schoonover said at the rally. “Our neighbors and family members will be taking five hour bus rides across the county just to have their day in court. That’s just not fair.”
unionman575
March 19, 2013
For all her eloquence, few Californians heard the chief justice’s speech. For that matter, relatively few people know just how many courts have been closed and cases indefinitely postponed because of budget cuts over the past several years.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130318/OPINION/130319527/1033/news?Title=PD-Editorial-Price-gouging-plan-to-fund-state-courts
PD Editorial: Price-gouging plan to fund state courts
RICH PEDRONCELLI / Associated Press
Last Modified: Monday, March 18, 2013 at 5:29 p.m.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, lamented closed courts and other cutbacks in her annual state of the judiciary speech last week.
“Justice requires a court,” she told state legislators. “But what we once counted on — that courts would be open, available and ready to dispense prompt justice — no longer exists in California.”
Cantil-Sakauye gave her speech an added dimension with the story of Clarence Gideon, a Florida convict whose hand-written appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court resulted in a landmark 1963 decision affirming the right of every criminal defendant to have legal counsel.
“Think of Mr. Gideon,” she concluded. “Justice for all.”
For all her eloquence, few Californians heard the chief justice’s speech. For that matter, relatively few people know just how many courts have been closed and cases indefinitely postponed because of budget cuts over the past several years.
No doubt those cuts combined with a lack of public awareness are a source of anxiety for Cantil-Sakauye. Maybe it’s also the catalyst for an astonishingly bad idea to raise money for the courts — charging $10 for so much as a peek at any file in any courthouse.
The $10-per-file service fee is one of several statutory changes submitted to the state Legislature by the Judicial Council for possible inclusion in one of the trailer bills required to implement the state budget.
The fee originated in closed-door meetings of a working group comprised of judges and clerks, according to a Courthouse News Service report. It was included in budget language approved without comment by the Judicial Council, the policymaking arm of the court system. Cantil-Sakauye chairs the council.
The clerk’s office at any courthouse is a hub of activity. There are lawyers and couriers filing lawsuits and other legal documents, and there are people who need to review them — judges and more lawyers, of course, but also journalists, private investigators, information services, legal researchers, students, watchdog groups and, of course, average citizens.
Arbitrary and excessive fees would put some information services out of business. Just as important, they would be a deterrent to journalists and citizens wanting to do research or to simply follow a court case.
Clerks already are allowed to charge a $15 fee to assist with searches that take more than 15 minutes. Courts also are legally entitled to charge more for copies than other public agencies. Moreover, the court’s budget bill would double this fee, from $1 per page to $2 per page.
As the chief justice noted, courts lost two-thirds of their state funding over the past five years. Courtrooms have been closed, staff laid off and fees boosted, adding hundreds of dollars to a routine traffic citation, while just 1 percent of the general fund goes to the court system. “I submit to you that equal access to justice for 38 million Californians cannot be had for a penny on the dollar,” Canti-Sakauye said.
Indeed, more funding is needed, but more price gouging will only push the state further from her goal of justice for all.
Nathaniel Woodhull
March 19, 2013
Slowly, very slowly, more and more press outlets are starting to pick up “negative” press items regarding HRH-2 and the AOC. KPIX-5 put up a story critical of the decision to charge $10 for access to public records. We can all rest assured that the occupants of the Crystal Palace will continue to screw-up and recommend these types of idiotic measures that will simply inflame the public.
The ACJ and CJA need to pick up the proposed Amendment to Article VI. The proposal is a starting point, it’s not written in stone. But we need to get the ball rolling!
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/03/19/california-courts-may-start-charging-to-view-public-files-information/
JusticeCalifornia
March 19, 2013
Re Rosenberg/Maguire/Parish: A slugfest all the way around.
But query: Why are certain judges allowed to mislead voters, and why are certain lawyers defending judges in retention elections allowed to slam opponents, with impunity?
Exhibit A: Marin’s Michael Dufficy. Remember him? (Justice Ruvulo, check the voluminous CJP files for Dufficy, and also that March 2004 complaint about the 2004 Dufficy Marin County retention election. LOL.)
Good old partying Mike.
http://www.sfweekly.com/2000-10-18/feature/odor-odor-in-the-court/
Dufficy was admonished at least THREE times by the Commission on Judicial Performance.
All of that happened before Dufficy’s 2004 retention election. Not to worry. Nothing that a little mudslinging spin by well-connected Bar Association royalty cannot fix.
Lawyer Neil Moran was campaign treasurer for Dufficy and ever so many other Marin bench members. He is the husband of Marin Judge Lynn Duryee.
Moran sent out a fundraising letter claiming Dufficy’s opponents “have repeated the same false and unsubstantiated allegations that were laid to rest long ago. . . .Dirty politics like this have no place in the dialogue of a judicial campaign.. . . Join the tremendous outpouring of support for Mike Dufficy: EVERY sitting Marin County Judge, EVERY Past President of the Bar Association, the Marin County Sheriff. . . . .”.
Dufficy insisted in the press he had done nothing wrong , far outspent his challengers, and won. . . .although his two virtually unknown challengers walked away with an impressive 43% of the vote.
Moran sent out a similar letter slamming opponents when he ran Judge Sutro’s 2006 retention election campaign.
There is a more civilized way to create accountability and inform voters of judicial qualifications than engaging in bench/bar slugfests. Namely, Judicial Performance Evaluations, utilized in many states, and recommended to the Judicial Council years ago (2006) by Bert Brandenberg of Justice at Stake at the November 2006 Summit of Judicial Leaders in SF. Court reform groups suggested them to the legislature in 2007. The Judicial Council’s Commission on Impartial Courts gave the thumbs down to the idea of Judicial Performance Evaluations, although they had support from two people who are very familiar with the dark underbelly of the branch: Darrell Steinberg and Justice Rivera.
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/cicfinalreport(1).pdf
Comment 215–Rivera
Comment 13—Steinberg
Election brawls will continue until voters are provided with a source of reliable information about judges taking part in retention elections.
Wendy Darling
March 19, 2013
When you cut something to the bone, there’s an inherent risk that gangrene can set in, followed by death. Published today, Tuesday, March 19, from Courthouse News Service, by Matt Reynolds:
Los Angeles Superior Court Cuts Staff and Resources to the Bone
By MATT REYNOLDS
LOS ANGELES (CN) – Los Angeles Superior Court will close eight courthouses and slash hundreds of jobs to cut the last $85 million from its $195 million budget shortfall for this fiscal year.
The court announced its restructuring plan Friday. It said it already has cut $110 million from its annual budget but needs to cut $85 million more by the end of the fiscal year, June 30.
The Superior Court has cut 511 jobs and consolidated courts. It will relocate criminal, traffic, juvenile, small claims, eviction disputes, and civil collections to other courts.
Personal injury, probate cases and some civil cases will be heard only at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown.
Some civil trials will now be heard in dedicated county trial courts.
State funding cuts left the county court system with an annual $195 million budget shortfall.
The court said in a statement that the 511 job cuts would bring its workforce reduction over the past four years to 24 percent. The $110 million already cut constituted more than 15 percent of its discretionary budget.
But the remaining $85 million shortfall forced the court to swing the ax again.
Presiding Judge David Wesley said the court has “lived up to its promise” to provide full-service courts throughout the county, but the courts “no longer have the resources to do so.”
“We are now being forced by budget cuts to make changes that will disadvantage litigants, attorneys, justice system partners and all court users across the spectrum and across our court,” Wesley said in a statement.
The judge called the consolidations the court’s “day of reckoning” and a “last ditch effort to save access to justice in Los Angeles County.”
“The result will be reduced services, long lines and travel distances that may well deter people from seeking and getting the justice they deserve. It is a sad irony that as our economy is turning the corner our justice system is going downhill,” Wesley said.
The restructuring plan was approved by the court’s budget committee, supervising judges and court executives.
More than 50 judges and staff made the decisions on job cuts and court closures after five months spent looking at alternatives, the court said.
As courthouses across the state count their pennies, Californians will feel the pain.
Closures in San Bernardino mean litigants will have to travel an additional 130 miles.
Fresno Superior Court will operate courthouses only in the city of Fresno.
Los Angeles County courthouses will close at Beacon Street, Huntington Park, Kenyon Juvenile, Malibu, Pomona North, San Pedro, West Los Angeles and Whittier, and most court work will be removed from Beverly Hills and Catalina.
The county will also wave goodbye to an alternative dispute resolution center, cut court reporters and lay off all juvenile referees, the court announced.
“Justice requires a court,” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said in her annual State of the Judiciary speech. “But what we once counted on – that courts would be open, available and ready to dispense prompt justice – no longer exists in California.”
Community groups sued the Superior Court last week, for cutting access to eviction hearing courthouses. The federal lawsuit claimed the court’s action “shuts the courthouse doors on many of the county’s most vulnerable residents.”
Community members, lawyers and court workers rallied outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse last Thursday to protest the closures, staging a mock trial to highlight the impact of the cuts.
“We’re going to do everything we can to stop these closures, because if the judges have their way, we’re the ones who will be left behind,” SEIU Local 721 President Bob Schoonover said at the rally. “Our neighbors and family members will be taking five hour bus rides across the county just to have their day in court. That’s just not fair.”
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/19/55845.htm
Long live the ACJ.
MaxRebo5
March 19, 2013
I loved the Things that make you go “hmmmmm…..” from JCW desk. That is too funny. I can’t believe there was ever a publicly funded conference center named after her given how bad CCMS went. Only CA Courts names things (generally conference centers) after failed leaders. My advice to Sheila is take your plaque and head for Scottsdale. Gotta go now. I have some Scotts fertilizer to spread on my lawn.
Wendy Darling
March 19, 2013
Today’s installment of Speak With One Voice. The real motto of 455 Golden Gate Avenue: Access to Justice – for the right price. Published today, Tuesday, March 19, from Courthouse News Service, by Bill Girdner:
Locking Up the Public Record
By BILL GIRDNER
The trial courts cast about for ways to save some money or make some money, and a couple clerks say that long searches of court records should be paid for.
“The discussion revolved around the fact that the fee had to be reasonably related to the services provided,” said Sonoma’s presiding judge.
But there is already a state law covering searches that take a long time. A search of court records that takes over ten minutes triggers a charge of fifteen dollars.
So the Administrative Office of the Courts takes over the clerks’ idea for a fee “reasonably related to services” and, strangely, turns it into its opposite — a new law that uncouples the search fee from the work involved.
The fee is now arbitrary, tied solely to the number of files that are provided, no matter whether they take a few seconds to hand over the counter or take a long time to gather.
The wrong-way nature of the proposal from the administrative office is perhaps not surprising, given its history on the handling of public funds, including the half-billion dollars misspent on a defunct software program.
But it would have a heck of an impact.
A standard part of a journalist’s job in covering a courthouse is to look for news in the stack of new cases filed that day. At ten dollars a file, the act of handing the stack to a reporter would trigger a fee of hundreds of dollars.
On an average day, for example, the fee would come to $400 for 40 new files in San Jose’s superior court and $700 for 70 files in San Francisco’s superior court, translating to $64,000 and $182,000 a year.
That’s roughly a quarter-million-dollars a year to cover only two courts in California — an amount that no newspaper will pay or can afford to pay.
But nobody really expects members of the public or journalists to pay such fees.
In proposing the new fee to the Legislature, the bureaucrats of the administrative office said they could not measure its fiscal impact. That inability stands in marked contrast to a range of additional fees proposed by the same bureaucrats who found it quite possible to guess at the dollar amounts to be gained.
The true reason that fiscal impact cannot be determined is because there will be next to none. Few will be able to pay the exorbitant fee.
It will in fact operate as a punitive measure.
If you really want to look at the public record, the court is going to sock it to you.
Now, the idea is said to have come out of a couple courts, among them Placer County. The clerk there said the new law is needed because, “We don’t keep a timer or stop watch for staff.”
That excuse was echoed almost to the word by an administrative office lobbyist who told a California Senate budget committee, “It’s hard to determine when you hit that stop watch,” suggesting a natural likeness of mind or shared talking points.
So that is what it all boils down to.
The court administrators want to turn public access on its head and in practice lock the public record away from the public — because it is too much trouble to keep track of time.
The tricky part of the proposal is that court budgets have taken a huge hit and many court workers are being laid off. So the natural reaction to any objection to the fee is to say, you folks want a free ride.
But that blunderbuss of an argument breaks down here because the fee is unlikely to generate income. It will instead lock up the public record.
Thus the courts’ central bureaucrats have taken a reasonable idea and mismanaged it just as they have mismanaged much of the courts’ money.
Is there no end to this plague.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/19/55865.htm
Long live the ACJ.
Michael Paul
March 19, 2013
There’s a difference between an extraordinary requests for information and the information that should be available at a reporters fingertips. Case information is the latter. If it is properly filed it should be available in minutes. If they’re new filings, they should be available even sooner if they haven’t been filed or scanned.
I’m also joining MaxRebo in disagreeing with The OBT and Lando. Justice Baxter is either part of the solution or part of the problem. He might otherwise be a swell guy and not one to rock the boat but as MaxRebo pointed out, he owns the 10.00 fee to search for a court record and much of his inaction as a council member speaks for itself. For quite a few years now.
Justice Baxter has not contributed to any solutions. Something like this fee should have come up in the judicial council first and not mysteriously tacked on to a trailer bill in the dead of night. A well informed council should have brought it up for discussion, allowed public input and comment because the guys and gals that write their paychecks deserve input. Then it should have gone up for a vote for all the good that might bring….
JusticeCalifornia
March 19, 2013
I agree, MaxRebo and Michael. What is that saying?
“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
Branch debacles have been documented, reported and publicized for years. Members of the bench–at all levels–and the bar–at all levels, have gone along to get along. . . .or get ahead.
Fear of “rocking the boat” is simply not an excuse for those who have sought out leadership positions.
Wendy Darling
March 19, 2013
Apparently, Jon Ortiz hasn’t drunk the AOC Kool-Aid. From today’s State Worker column at the Sacramento Bee, by Jon Ortiz.
Audit: California Courts’ Statewide Financial Report Incomplete
A sampling of the business reports by the California court system’s administrative body reveals some flaws in how local courts assigned contracts last year and reporting gaps in goods or services purchases, according to a report released this morning.
State Auditor Elaine Howle found that the Administrative Office of the Courts’ financial report to the Legislature for the first half of 2012 contained “several instances where data in (the report) was inaccurate,”
The AOC is the business arm of the Judicial Counsel, which sets policy for the California’s network of 58 county courts. By law, it gives lawmakers a financial report twice each year.
The auditor’s review spot-checked the January-to-July 2012 report against 92 records from the superior courts of Napa, Orange, Sacramento, Stanislaus, Sutter, and Yolo counties.
Auditors found so many discrepancies that “we stopped testing when it became clear that the report contained a number of inaccuracies,” Howle said, noting that 12 percent contained at least one error.
In some cases the AOC’s report filtered out descriptions of the goods or services procured. In others, the amounts paid were wrong.
The AOC said that it has since fixed the problem with collecting the information.
The local courts generally complied with judicial contracting laws, the auditor reported, although a few problems surfaced: Some court managers overstepped the monetary limits of their authority to approve purchases, approved sole-source contracts without explaining why or didn’t advertise for bids. And none of the courts had procedures in place to do business with veteran-owned companies, which the law requires.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2013/03/audit-california-courts-procurement-records-incomplete.html
Long live the ACJ.
MaxRebo5
March 19, 2013
Thanks Wendy. I’m glad to see the auditor is on top of another AOC set of errors in procurements. The AOC leaders can’t be trusted at all so it is good to check everything they try to pass off. How many %&*# ups do the AOC get to make?
Just shut down the AOC. CA Courts will be fine and the public will be better served by their local courts and their appellate courts getting funded directly. Keep the JC under the Chief’s full control but just starve it of all funding for a staff agency. Problems solved.
unionman575
March 19, 2013
“Just shut down the AOC. CA Courts will be fine and the public will be better served by their local courts and their appellate courts getting funded directly.”
Let’s do it!
😉
courtflea
March 20, 2013
There is so much wrong with this search fee but what really makes me mad is what the heck do people think clerks are paid for? Its like I used to tell my staff: the customer is not an interuption of your work, they are why you have a job! But that stupid search fee would not stand the test of a courtroom. Talk about denying access. Only some jerks in a working group that are so out of touch with day to day operations would make up such a idiotic fee.
JusticeCalifornia
March 20, 2013
From Maria Dinzeo’s March 15 article:
“Alliance judges have pointed to that decision and many before it in criticizing the council’s pattern of unanimous decisions that follow the recommendations from the administrative office on policies that affect the courts.
“Over the last 15 years, under this dysfunctional form of governance, we have witnessed the doubling in size of the central bureaucracy, the wasting of over $500 million dollars on a failed computer system, the granting of overly generous pension perks to the 30 top paid AOC bureaucrats, the allowance of ‘telecommuting privileges’ to high paid central office staff–including supervisors, and wasteful construction and maintenance projects, just to name a few,” Gilliard said.
“In that same time period we have never witnessed a single instance where these hand picked Council members have ever turned down an AOC staff recommendation,” she pointed out. “That fact alone should be a great cause of concern and a rallying cry for reform in light of the historical track record of mismanagement, bloat, and waste.”
Let’s stop and really think about that.
Then let’s get real. THE AOC IS RUNNING THE BRANCH. Setting policy, spending branch money, and telling 2,000 judges what to do. Damn, it’s an NCSC wet dream come true.
No offense to court administrators, but LOL. Seriously?
These people are running the biggest judiciary in the Western World? http://www.courts.ca.gov/policyadmin-aoc.htm
hahahahahah. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I guess Jody Patel showed Justice Scotland (who wanted to exclude her from SEC proceedings) who is boss.
And turning to the March 19 Ortiz SacBee article: How many times must the state auditor tell us the CA AOC — has been and is incompetent?
How many times must we watch failed “top leadership” give themselves and each other stupid awards named after themselves and each other?
And I’m sorry, does anyone else have a problem with failed “top leadership” telling bench and bar members to “jump”, and expecting them all to say “how high?” — no matter the expense to their credibility, their profession, and the public? Can you say “conflict of interest”?
What is going down in the branch is an insult to the public, and every member of the branch. It is bringing the administration of justice to a halt, and breaking the backs of the CA taxpayers.
Democratize the Judicial Council.
courtflea
March 21, 2013
I’m right there with you Justice CA.