Alliance Backs Bill for Court Reporters in Key Cases
Dear California Media,
Most of us are trial court judges. We have a deep appreciation for the work that court reporters perform. We know that transcripts protect rights. Transcripts clarify complex and subtle rulings. Transcripts preserve testimony; without them, valid grounds for appeal are lost. Transcripts protect judges from false accusations of misconduct. One of the most painful repercussions of the budget crisis of the last half-decade is the reduction in the number of court proceedings for which court reporters are required. Our courts have laid off hundreds of capable court reporters, and the quality of justice in California has suffered considerably as a result.
Assembly Member Richard Bloom (D-Los Angeles), a family law attorney for nearly 30 years, has authored Assembly Bill 749. This bill would require the stenographic reporting of vital proceedings in child custody and domestic violence restraining order cases. Assembly Member Bloom’s proposal would restore an important measure of protection to some of our most vulnerable litigants in some of our most important proceedings—proceedings at which lives are literally at stake. We endorse it wholeheartedly.
Alliance President Judge Steve White sent a letter to Assembly Member Bloom this morning expressing our support for the bill, which passed through the Assembly Judiciary Committee this week and is now headed to the Assembly Appropriations Committee before it moves to the floor for a vote. We encourage judges from throughout the state to join us in supporting this important bill.
Directors, Alliance of California Judges
_____________________________________________
Here at JCW we couldn’t agree more regarding the necessity of court reporters and sincerely hope that you join us – and many others – in voicing your support for Assembly Bill 749.
Let’s put court reporters back in California’s courtrooms.
Annette Marie Blanco
April 17, 2015
Thank you so much for this recognition. it is greatly appreciated!
jane
April 17, 2015
Remove Court reporters from Courtrooms and bring in eletronic recorders !!!! Coourt Reportes in Family court especially alter transcripts in favor of judges and certain attorneys!!!!!!!!!!!The court reporters board has no oversight and I do not see what their purpose is. I am against this proposed bill!!
Richard Power
April 20, 2015
I have been handling appeals for many years and am not aware of a single instance of a court reporter intentionally altering a transcript to favor a judge or an attorney. Jane, do you have any factual support for your rather strong allegations? There may be other ways in which the reporting system could be altered to achieve lower costs besides totally removing reporters from the system but the reasons for implementing such solutions would not be that reporters are altering transcripts.
jane
April 28, 2015
How can I get factual support for my allegations when the court reporters board refuse to release the original stenographic notes taken the same day as the hearing and the court reporter refuses to provide the original notes!. Furthermore, the way I see it court reporters are using regular computers and not stenographic machines where the notes cannot be changed so how can you be so sure it is not altered unless you bring in you own recorder. I know exactly what took place in my hearings and it it not what is in the transcripts!!
Wendy Darling
April 17, 2015
Today’s installment of Tani’s Follies. Published today, Friday, April 17, from Courthouse News Service, by Maria Dinzeo:
I’m sure Queen Feckless will devout considerable thought to this issue while she is being driven home by her taxpayer-funded CHP chauffeur.
Courts’ Improvement Fund Broke, Cuts Coming Judicial Council Says
By MARIA DINZEO
(CN) – With a crucial judiciary coffer running at a deficit, California’s Judicial Council met Friday to deliver a painful blow of funding cuts to trial court security, technology, court-appointed counsel for juveniles and complex civil litigation.
The Improvement and Modernization Fund, for years a source of funding for court technology projects, interpreters, court security, judicial education, subscriptions to publications, jury management, self-help centers and a host of other projects and programs, is $11 million in the hole.
“There is no money in the IMF,” Judge Laurie Earl of Sacramento gravely told the council. “Any action you do today needs to be based on there’s no money in the IMF. This fund runs at a deficit. It has a structural imbalance and we need to act now or we’ll be forced off the cliff that is looming. The cliff is here and we are standing at the edge of it.”
Earl chairs the council’s trial court budget advisory committee, and is co-chair of its revenue and expenditure subcommittee.
On Friday, Earl’s committee recommended that the council approve about $10.8 million in cuts, which will eliminate funding for nine programs, including publication subscriptions, trial court security grants, alternative dispute resolution centers and the complex civil litigation program, which funds complex civil litigation staff in the superior courts of Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, San Francisco, and Santa Clara County.
The elimination of complex civil litigation funding from the IMF will save $4 million, the committee estimated. Future funding will be based on workload need.
The recommendations were a last-ditch effort to save the fund from insolvency, but the notion of de-funding programs like trial court security and complex civil litigation did not sit well with many council members.
Attorney Debra Pole said she spent Thursday dealing with a deluge of phone calls and emails from complex civil litigation attorneys who asked that the issue be tabled for further study.
“I cannot repeat in this open forum some of the statements that I got regarding these recommendations from people who do this every day,” she said. “People feel very, very, very strongly about this issue,” Pole said.
Judge Emily Elias, a judge in the Los Angeles Superior Court’s complex civil litigation department said, “I got off an airplane yesterday morning and a lawyer said to me, ‘We hear that you are eliminating complex and why are you all doing that?’ ”
Judge Brian McCabe of Merced said he wasn’t pleased with slashing of $1.2 million from security. He said extra security funding was crucial, since he and 150 others recently witnessed the fatal shooting in his courtroom of a man who “assaulted the court with two 10-inch blades.”
“In essence, we are choosing between whether we cut off our left hand or right hand, but either choice is not going to be pleasant and it is going to hurt,” McCabe said.
He added: “Notwithstanding, taking that local hat off and putting the statewide one on, I get it. I get that we have a deficit and we have to address it. I get that there is going to be some painful decisions here and that this is meant as a temporary stop-gap until we can figure out some either funding solutions or better mechanisms.”
The council also voted to cut five courts loose from IMF support to maintain remnants of the now-defunct software project called the Court Case Management System, at about $7 million a year. San Diego, Orange County, Ventura County and Sacramento signed on early to the project, which was intended to unite the state’s 58 trial courts under one case-tracking software system.
The project was terminated in 2012 amidst damning criticism from legislators, trial judges, court employees and union leaders as a costly and technologically unwieldy boondoggle. The courts that are currently using V3, the latest version of the system that the Legislature allowed the Judicial Council to support with the IMF, are all looking to replace their systems with software from vendors like Tyler Technologies and Thomson Reuters.
The plan is to incrementally wean the courts off the funding over four years, but the question remains as to how these courts will pay for their new systems.
Ventura County is particularly concerned, Second Appellate District Court Judge Judith Ashmann-Gerst told the council. Ashmann-Gerst, the council’s liaison to the Ventura court, said the court is interested in a deal with Tyler, but has no way to pay for it.
“The court feels it stuck its neck out when they signed up for V3 and now they need $3.5 million to go on to Tyler,” she said.
Ventura Presiding Judge Brian Back said the court has been in talks with Tyler for at least six months, but “we have no funds.”
The council unanimously voted to withdraw funding for V3 in 2016 and its tech committee will begin looking for alternate funding sources for the next three years.
Council members also voted to change the method of allocating funding for court-appointed attorneys for juveniles to be based on caseloads, but will revisit the issue next year.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/04/17/courts-improvement-fund-broke-cuts-coming-judicial-council-says.htm
Long live the ACJ.
John Lucas
April 17, 2015
Reporters are useful and their service is undoubtedly more reliable than any other medium.
What I do have a problem with is paying a reporter a salary to report when they spend a good portion of their time preparing transcripts which they then sell back to the court or litigants.
If they are available 100% of the time to report, then transcript preparation and sales is not a problem. A reporter paid a public salary should not ‘double dip’
.
Rose123
April 18, 2015
That “good portion of their time preparing transcripts” is done in the evening or on weekends. Why should a reporter not get paid for that? I doubt there is anyone out there that would work for free, especially for the amount of hours it takes to prepare transcripts. And I don’t know of any courthouse that would let a reporter work on their transcripts instead of being in the courtroom to report.
courtflea
April 18, 2015
A lot of reporters do transcripts during court work hours. I think that is what John is referring to as double dipping:
Rose123
April 19, 2015
If court is done and the reporter is no longer needed for further proceedings, I still don’t see it as double dipping if the reporter is working on transcripts during court hours. Transcripts have to get done.
Guest2
April 18, 2015
Court Reporters pay for their own paper, computer equipment, machine, software, binding materials, printers, and all other supplies, scopists, proofreaders. There’s not a day that goes by that we are not answering phone calls regarding transcripts, researching, hours spent after work and on the weekends always preparing something. That’s all out of our pocket. I would hardly call that double-dipping.
Maxrebo5
April 17, 2015
I know court reporters have been under attack by Team George for a long time so I hope they can win as it sucks when there is no record of a hearing. Pretty tough to win an appeal without a record.
The JC meeting today was very interesting as they took on the shortfall in the Improvement and Modernization Fund (IMF). They claim to have a zero sum game situation now and blamed the Governor and Legislature (never themselves) for the choices they have to make. The Chief called the situation “Hobbs Choices” which I took to mean nasty,brutish, and shortsighted. Someone else said we can either cut our left hand or our right but we have to cut something.
First they had to decide how to deal with cutting 4 million in funding for complex civil cases that some trial courts get but they can’t afford to keep going since the fund is short money. My thought was if they had just moved the AOC from SF to SAC, as the SEC Report suggested years ago, they could have saved 5 million a year.
Second they had to deal with Version 3 of CCMS because there is no money to maintain it. San Joaquin, Ventura, Orange, San Diego, and Sacramento all piloted V3 and it would cost 7 million a year to keep it running in these five courts. It was really funny when Justice Hull suggested maybe using courthouse construction money to prop the IMF up and save CCMS. I was thinking was he nuts? Cut your losses man. Stop flushing more taxpayer money down the toilet.
My opinion is those five courts have an accountability issue to deal with too. Their CEO’s pushed for CCMS and those execs didn’t deliver a viable product for their judges. Vickrey got canned at the AOC and so should those CEO’s who ran V3 leaving their trial courts with nothing. Very expensive errors were made and their execs share the blame. Heads of TCE’s should roll for these HUGE errors in judgment.
Jake Chatters ran V3 of CCMS for Sacramento (he left for the Placer CEO job before the CCMS crap hit fan) and now the Chief has just tapped Jake for the court futures committee. i don’t get it. You want someone who was integral in developing a failed court computer system to plan for the overall future of CA courts? It’s the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Mike Roddy ran CCMS V3 for San Diego. Michael Planet for Ventura. Not sure for San Joaquin and OC but there should be impacts for all of those TCE’s. Also the AOC regional directors at that time for those areas should be thanked and removed. Instead Jody Patel and Curt Soderlund remain in charge at the AOC making more than the Governor of California. Jody is also staff to the futures committee and again that is nuts. Reward and promote incompetence but then act like a victim when it goes to hell. That appears to be the ongoing plan of action for the Chief to lead the branch with into the future.
The JC was an “unhappy family’ today and they used the image of sea gulls getting nasty fighting for a few scraps of bread. I say that is the true legacy of Ron George, Bill Vickrey, and their team (who remain in place for Tani. If I was a legislator I wouldn’t give those same folks more taxpayer money to waste. As Reggie said recently, what the hell did you do with all the money?
Who would give money to a group that bullies their staff and even judges to speak with one voice? Who treat those with other ideas like they are at enemies and need to be forced out? Who have wasted hundreds of millions but act as if they are victims of unfair cuts? Who do not hold those administrators who failed the branch accountable? Who defiantly created and give out awards like the Vickrey Award after the Legislature demanded he resign for CCMS? They are in a complete bubble to this day.
Judge McCabe did say one thing that I found to be wise. He said something to the effect that the JC should not do the budget piece by piece. Instead the council should look at budget issues with a concern for all needs in the branch at the same time. Exactly! All items on the table so the values of the organization can be debated in the budget discussions. The JC votes to fund CCMS over trial court staffing. The JC votes to fund the AOC staff remaining in SF over relocating to Sacramento even though this will mean no funding for complex civil litigation for the trial courts. Own your budget choices and stop acting like victims! The other branches are fair and are not picking on CA Courts. .
The branch went nuts in recent years pushing for new funding in budget silos through all these JC committees. That piece by piece by piece budgeting ensured money for CCMS and new courthouses but 2,500 court employees got left out in the cold with layoffs. It was , wrong, immoral, unjust, and they have still not owned up to it. They can’t even cut their exec salaries to be less than the Governor so they are nowhere near dealing with their real culture and corruption problems. The state auditor warned they would not change and I think she is right too.
The branch keeps making the same mistakes over and over because it is the same people in charge. Team George needs to go and the Chief needs to change because the status quo system is just not working well for CA Courts.
unionman575
April 18, 2015
600 mil on CCMS and they are broke.
😉
unionman575
April 18, 2015
FUND CONDITION STATEMENTS
0159 State Trial Court Improvement and Modernization Fund S
😉
Lando
April 18, 2015
How did the IMF get 11 million dollars in the hole to begin with ? I think we all know the answer. The question I have is why weren’t other options or alternatives explored to make up the 11 million? Why did the insiders take out their prior poor spending decisions on trial court security and the complex civil litigation program? When are the Crystal Palace insiders going to do the right thing and start to save significant taxpayer dollars by vacating 455 Golden Gate and moving to Sacramento? How about selling off the rest of the totally wasteful fleet of cars identified by the State Auditor ? And how about the huge amounts spent on HRH-2’s chauffeur rides ? This is why we need to bring democracy back to our branch so fresh new voices can be heard to end the tyranny at 455 Golden Gate.
sunshine
April 19, 2015
Court reporters still have to provide every single bit of equipment and every supply needed to produce transcripts for the court and private parties. In addition to their writers, which cost thousands of dollars-Computer, printer, paper, ink, binding materials, to name a few of the supplies that are needed. Then on top of that, there has not been an increase in the statutory rates for court transcripts in 25 years. On top of that 25-year rate, reporters have to pay self-employment tax on that income. Who works for what they made 25 years ago? No one. But court reporters do. So before anyone makes statements about court reporters double-dipping, please get the facts. There is a lot more to the story than the comments stated in this thread.
wearyant
April 19, 2015
And don’t forget the software program that runs the computer-aided transcription 😉 which is a major investment at thousands of dollars. Usually no small feat to learn how to run it too. Reporters rock!