Trial Courts Held ‘Hostage’ In Security Cost Dispute

August 23, 2013 By
Now even the most basic courthouse security is a budget issue. In effect, California’s sheriffs and its judges are having a debate over paying for deputies who protect the courts. The Courthouse News Service explains that “… at the heart of the dispute is the question of who should ask the Legislature for the money to pay local sheriff departments for courthouse security.
 
The issue brought heated comments during a meeting earlier this month where judges settled on proposed distributions within the trial court slice of the roughly $3.4 billion California court budget… the trial courts are in agreement that funding for security should be on the list of priorities submitted to Gov. Jerry Brown’s finance department, said committee chair Judge Laurie Earl of Sacramento. But there is a dispute over who should make the request.
 
Part of the argument is that law enforcement budget requests are better received by the legislature and governor than court funding requests. It’s a story that tells us a lot about the status of civil courts in the state, and you can read it here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Paper Notes $93 Million Question For Trial Courts

August 20, 2013 By
The Desert Dispatch newspaper in San Bernardino County is among few outlets noting that the California Judicial Council will decide THIS WEEK where to allocate up to $93 million of “special funds” to support trial courts. Meeting in San Francisco starting Thursday, that group will evaluate recommendations from yet another committee, the “Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee.”
 
Citing the “state judiciary,” the Desert Dispatch says “… the two special funds provide primary support to self help centers, technology support and initiatives, the civil litigation program, education of judges and court staff and reimbursement for other court costs.” To some, especially to labor leaders, that seems like money that is not going directly to save courthouse jobs – an issue that links back to the state budget mandate for some budget increases to target jobs and keeping courthouses open.
 
To read more, check out the story here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Appeals Court Rules On Long-Standing Appeal Of Deputy Dismissal

August 19, 2013 By
A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy (turned security officer) in a labor case that began with a firing in 1990 and illustrates how “old” information can surface on the Internet. Among the issues was if employment records obtained online could be considered the same as “non-public” records and if the California Science Center acted property when it discovered previous information.
 
In effect, the employee explained his dismissal from the sheriff’s department in way, but it later surfaced that there was more possible wrongdoing involved. That came to light in 2007, years after the incident and after the employee had been working and received promotions. The worker’s legal team argued that online information should not be allowed for consideration because it was obtained without a waiver or other legal means for obtaining employment records. The Science Center countered that it got the information from the Internet.
 
You can read about California Science Center v. State Personnel Board (Arellanes), 13 S.O.S. 4282 at the MetNews here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

‘System Failure’ Closes ‘Public’ Court Budget Meeting

August 16, 2013 By
State officials are blaming a “systems failure” for loss of an audiocast feed that effectively shut unions and others out of a key budget-allocation meeting this week. The failure took on added impact, union leadership noted, because they had not received timely notice about the meeting and were relying on the audio. While the Administrative Office of the Courts set up a conference line for some of the budget committee members, there were not enough lines for labor officials and even legislative aides who wanted to hear about how court money is being divided.
 
The Courthouse News quoted Michelle Castro with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) saying that  “… we have a vested interest in trial court funding; how the funds get distributed and what purposes they are establishing priorities around,” Michelle Castro with the SEIU said in an interview. “We’re at a very critical juncture in the trial courts. We are going through extreme amounts of cuts on the backs of court workers.”
 
At issue are deliberations of a special advisory committee for trial court budgets that approved roughly $72 million for programs supporting the trial courts and technology projects. The Courthouse News reported that the “… allocations included $18 million to maintain interim versions of the now-defunct Court Case Management System and the Arizona server that hosts it.” That’s bound to raise eyebrows because the state legislature approved a last-minute $60 million for trail courts with the direction it be used to save jobs and keep courts open – there has been a concern that money might be directly spent on other areas or diverted to replace money that would have otherwise gone for those purposes. 
 
     “Our big issue is the Legislature said this $60 million was directly supposed to go to making sure the court doors were open. Is that really happening?” said a union official in the Courthouse News story. Read more here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Court Cuts Are ‘Back To The Future’ For Delays

August 15, 2013 By
A relatively older post (meaning pre-2013 state budget) by a West Hollywood attorney has been making the rounds (at least our rounds) because it notes that the looming delays in California’s civil courts are actually a return to the bad old days.
 
David S. White begins his history lesson by noting that “… thirty-six years ago, when I began practicing law in the Los Angeles Superior Court system, the backlog of cases was so immense that you had to wait five years to get to trial. A Master Calendar Department would then put the lawyers on Beepers (like some restaurants today use), and, when your Beeper buzzed you, it was time to gather up your boxes of documents and your witnesses, and come to the courtroom designated for your trial – if that courtroom was not already backed up, trying one or more cases.”
 
He then outlines how a “fast track” policy tried to get disputes to trial in a year or less, a goal that Mr. White feels was very nearly attained until the “bubble” of the early 2000’s burst in California real estate, followed soon by the national Great Recession and a Golden State deeply “upside down” financially. 
 
His post at the Fox & Hounds website offers context, but also a lively comments section on civil tort reforms and the like. He is good at responding. Find the discussion here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Pushback, Frustration Mounts Against Slow Court Dockets

August 14, 2013 By
It will take a bit more time before the most recent civil court budget courts, and their resulting delays, become a routine part of lawsuit strategy. But, already you can see where people seeking their day in court are becoming increasingly frustrated – to the point of one attorney holding press conferences and citing a landmark NBC3 investigative report by Stephen Stock (see previous posts) to make his point.
 
The Michael Rooney law office, in an apparent Redwood City civil lawsuit between individuals, even issued a press release over a popular distribution network recently and scheduled a press conference on the courthouse steps – just to demand a case get a trial date. In the statement, the budget cuts are noted and the argument is made that people abusing the courts can “…further exploit the Courts’ apparent inability to handle cases by using every trick to delay their victims’ right to justice, while making themselves judgment-proof before a jury renders a judgment against them, once again outsmarting the legal system that they have abused for years.”
 
The NBC3 report comes into play (and you can bet it will again) by noting “… as San Mateo County Superior Court Presiding Judge Robert Foiles, recently stated in an interview by NBC3 Reporter, Stephen Stock: “justice delayed is justice denied… and we’re delaying justice!”
 
You can check out the PR Newswire release here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Three Large-State Court Leaders Bemoan Funding Cuts

August 9, 2013 By
Chief justices from California, New York and Texas joined three federal judges Thursday in bemoaning court funding nationwide. The group was part of an American Bar Association conference in San Francisco, participating in a panel discussion called “Are Courts Dying? The Decline of Open and Public Adjudication.” The California chief justice actually said she was “afraid” to see the future, which is true enough but sidesteps the fact that many people are afraid of the present.
 
The ABA website coverage also noted that the cuts have been going on for years, even though they may have finally bottomed out: “While budget cuts have severely hit the justice systems of the nation’s three most populated states, each top judge offered some encouragement. A study last fall by the National Center for State Courts indicated after four years of constant reductions, funding in most states has stabilized if not increased.”
 
The Bay City News website reported that “California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said she had reluctantly supported some increases in court fees as ‘desperate measures’ in the face of deep funding cuts that have resulted in the closure of 40 courthouses and 77 courtrooms statewide.
 
The BCN also reports that “… judges also said public access to courts is impaired not only by funding cuts but also by the high cost of lawyers in civil cases and the so-called “outsourcing” of adjudication. Examples of outsourcing, they said, are the use of private judges for those who can afford it and the use of mandatory, closed-door arbitration instead of open courts to resolve consumer disputes. About 8,000 lawyers and guests are attending the ABA meeting, which continues throughTuesday.

 

Read the Bay City coverage via the San Francisco Appeal here.

 
See the ABA website daily coverage of the ongoing meeting here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget

Courts Begin New System For Rationing Budget

August 7, 2013 By
It was just a “drop in the bucket,” according to California’s chief courts fiscal officer, but the restored funding from our recently passed state budget is being allocated under a new formula that creates winners and losers. The San Francisco Appeal website has a good accounting of its local situation, noting that the “increase” actually “… still leaves the superior courts $201 million short of the amount received last year, on top of previous cuts of $214 million.”
 
The website explains “… the new allocation formula, developed by an advisory committee of judges and court executives, takes account of varying court workloads that may have changed in recent years because of population growth or other factors. The previous formula, used for the past 15 years, was based primarily on the share each superior court had in 1998, the year the state government took over court funding from the individual counties. That approach didn’t keep up with increased court workloads in counties where the population grew faster.”
 
The $60 million added to the state budget at the last minute is considered “new” spending and will come under the new guidelines.
 
In the Bay Area, it’s been widely reported that Contra Costa, Monterey, Solano and Sonoma county superior courts will get more funding under the new system than they would have under the old formula. Los Angeles Superior Court is also expected to get a slight increase over what it would have gotten before.
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Prisons Offer Lessons For Courts Rationing

August 5, 2013 By
There are lessons for civil justice advocates in the ongoing soap opera over California’s prison overcrowding. One is that the state can and will shift its responsibilities to counties, in this case moving inmates to county jails. Another is that the “miracle” of Gov. Brown’s “balanced budget” hinges on many such moves to effectively de-fund agencies. And yet another is that it may take years and years, but the chickens do come home to roost.
 
The news is that a U.S. Supreme Court decision pretty much gives the state a late December deadline for meeting the terms of a 2009 ruling by a  special three-judge panel. That panel said that the state’s 33 prisons were too overcrowded to provide prisoners adequate medical and mental health care. The governor has already met much of the court’s demand from what he calls a “realignment program,” which simply shifted low-level offenders from state prisons to county jails.
 
It’s unclear what, exactly, the state will do. But it’s worth noting that they have already shifted many “low-level” non-violent inmates to the counties. That means those left in prisons are those that did not make the cut for county jails. And yet another lesson for the civil courts, where cutbacks have also impacted the ability of the disabled to attain public services, that the state sometimes responds only when ordered to respond.
 
As usual, Howard Mintz (@hmintz)at the Mercury News newspaper makes a complex situation easy to understand. Read his article here. 
 
 
Follow CCM on Twitter @CACourtsMonitor
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Another Newspaper Stands Up For Justice

August 2, 2013 By
“… but there is something particularly disturbing about a closed courtroom and what that says about how we govern and how we view access to justice” says the The Record newspaper of San Joaquin County in a new editorial. Along with its strong opinion, the paper also reports that the county’s local court will use an “additional” $1.5 million to re-hire some laid-off court staffers.
 
But, adds the newspaper, “… the additional money, however, is not enough to reopen shuttered courtrooms in Tracy and Lodi that were closed in April.” And the paper explains why the “additional” money is not really adding anything: “San Joaquin County Superior Court Executive Officer Rosa Junqueiro notes that lawmakers this year cut the courts by $261 million statewide, so adding back in $60 million still means California court funding is off by $201 million.”
 
Along with updating the local situation, The Record is reminding us that not all the mainstream media is ignoring the justice rationing issue. Read the editorial here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget
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