Court Funding Gets S.D. ABC Report

April 30, 2014 By
The San Diego ABC News affiliate is offering some “overview” coverage of the state’s civil courts funding crisis. The story offers nothing new, but is a recent example of more mainstream press starting to notice the “five-year” crisis in justice funding. The reporters offer the insight that “Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to solve the problem” – they cite no source, but certainly plenty of justice advocates would question the governor’s motives.
 
The usual territory is covered: Gov. Brown’s proposed a $105 million budget increase for 14/15 and the station asks:  But is it enough to help the judicial system bounce back? We also get what has become the most-quoted talking point from California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, “We are rationing justice, and it’s become more than a fiscal problem… it is in my view not a civil rights problem.”
 
Also cites is the failed statewide computer system, with the ABC report saying that “… eyebrows were raised over the $1.2 billion that was spent on a computer system overhaul — a computer system that never worked.” You can read more between the lines here: Budget woes: Can California’s judicial system recover from a five-year crisis?
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Chief Justice Seeks Another $266m For Courts

April 8, 2014 By

Think what you will of California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, she is proving relentless at advocating for increased courts funding. A recent example came with an KABC Los Angeles Eyewitness News interview with Adrienne Alpert, who asked tough questions about court management and budget issues. 

Alpert notes that “… chief justices rarely agree to interviews, but Cantil-Sakauye is adamant the $105 million the governor added to the judicial budget is not nearly enough” then adds that “the chief justice says it will actually take $266 million to keep the courts running as they are and more than double that to fully serve the public.”

The interview is interesting, in part, because it refines the likely points as the state budget annual deadline moves into the two-month range. See video and text of the story here. 

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Court Budget Hike Tied To Pension, Other Changes

January 10, 2014 By
 
Gov. Brown’s new budget proposal includes $3.2 billion for the state’s courts, an increase of $105 million from last year, but also eliminates local trial court reserve funds in favor of a a large “rainy day” fund in control of the Judicial Council. It also takes aim at forcing court workers to contribute more to their pension funds, according to coverage in The Courthouse News Service.
 
“There is a longstanding disparity in trial court employees in terms of how much they pay into their pensions,” said Department of Finance Director Michael Cohen, as quoted in CNS. “There are some employees in the court system that still pay nothing into their pensions. We need to move toward employees paying into roughly half the cost of their pensions.”
 
The CNS also offered this: “Though pressed by reporters, Cohen declined to say whether the pension mandate will apply to employees of the Administrative Office of the Courts, the judiciary’s administrative agency based in San Francisco. The top 30 administrators in the AOC enjoyed a top-loaded pension perk where the taxpayers contributed 22 percent on top of salary to the administrators’ pension accounts without any matching contribution from the individual administrator.”
 
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‘City In Decline’ Report Skips Court Woes

January 9, 2014 By
 
Another example of how off-the-radar our civil courts crisis can be: The once-anticipated Los Angeles 2020 Commission report of “A City In Crisis” does not include those long lines at the courthouse or the slow dismantling of our juvenile and community courthouse system. Indeed, after reading the Los Angeles Times review of our city’s crisis, you realize that our “paper of record” has taken a harder look at the crackdown on jaywalking than on the civil courts.
 
Granted, that may be because you have to connect the dots. Superior Courts funding is a “state issue,” until it becomes a police issue, a landlord-renter issue, a business development issue, an economic recruitment issue – in other words, until it disrupts the stuff that forces headlines. Reviews of the 20-page report, actually billed as “part one,” have been harsh, with the L.A. Weekly calling it “a mess” and noting that the group complains that the city leadership “… suffers from a crisis in leadership and direction” before saying “… it’s clear that this report is suffering from a crisis in leadership and direction, as it bogs down in the same old thinking. Whether this condition also applies to the city’s leaders is impossible to know, as the report does not analyze, address or acknowledge anything that any particular city leader has done about any of these issues.”
 
The “independent commission,” chaired by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor, is comprised of 13 men and women and was set up after voters turned down a recent city tax increase. An L.A. Times opinion piece ran down the crisis list: “The city, according to the report, is afflicted with weak job growth; high poverty; bad traffic; underperforming schools; weak, inactive government; red tape that stifles economic development; crumbling infrastructure; unfunded pensions; budget gimmicks and a disaffected electorate… Los Angeles is sinking into a future in which it no longer can provide the public services to which our people’s taxes entitle them and where the promises made to public employees about a decent and secure retirement simply cannot be kept.”
 
It’s lively reading, but perhaps frustrating to anyone hoping that rationed justice can receive the same attention as the live-altering use of budget gimmicks.
 
 
 
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Chief Justice, Budget Plans Sketched In Report

January 7, 2014 By

One of those end-of-year “people to watch” features is hardly the stuff of investigative journalism, but a piece in The Tribune newspaper in San Luis Obispo outlines at least part of the upcoming judicial budget battles. The feature on California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye is mostly glowing, but is among the few to note that early budget drafts exclude court budget increases.

The story is also one of the few that notes a specific number that the chief justice will seek from the legislature, although it is an indirect reference: “With those priorities in mind, Cantil-Sakauye is making a serious push for increased funding in the next fiscal year: another $472 million, which is about how much has cumulatively been cut from the judiciary’s budget since 2008.”

That report adds that “… that could be an uphill battle: Assembly Speaker John A. Perez released a blueprint budget plan earlier this month that included no new appropriations for the judiciary…” Read more here. 
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Judicial Reporter Offers Stark 2013 Recap

December 31, 2013 By

For anyone dealing with rationed justice in 2013, it felt like a nearly constant barrage of bad news. Now Bill Girdner at The Courthouse News offers a year-in-review piece that quickly reminds us why – because it was a barrage of bad news. The story begins with “… it was a news-filled year for the courts in California, as they survived huge budget cuts and walked backwards on transparency and slightly forward on reform as the Legislature told them to open a warren of closed committees.”

He notes the budget cutting and that it was considered a “reprieve” when the governor decided not to cut the budget even more. He even recalls when In “… an old scandal returned as the council over-rode objections from judges and allowed telecommutingby the highly paid mandarins of the Administrative Office of the Courts… in a companion decision, the council voted to take a look at the salaries of those same bureaucrats but later decided that the inquiry should be conducted by the bureaucrats themselves. As the year winds down, the inquiry seems to have stalled.”

And maybe this slipped by in the holiday rush, but Girdner recalls that “… in December, the council elevated its technology committee to the status of internal committee, igniting a blast from judges who said the leaders of the tech committee and its task force had “proven themselves incompetent” and should be replaced.”

In terms of the legal community, it reads less like the summary of a year-in-review and more like an indictment. See the story here.

(Program Note: The CCM will not update tomorrow as we observe the New Year’s holiday)

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‘Top Hellhole’ Ranking Sparks Some Debate

December 27, 2013 By
There’s not much balance in most online coverage of California’s latest “Judicial Hellhole” ranking, but there’s a good exception at the Law360 website. Their report notes that the ranking by the American Tort Reform Association doesn’t tell “the whole story,” but offers strong comments from people on both sides of the debate.
 
For example, Law360 writes that “… the report focuses too heavily on a minority of abusive cases, according to Brian Kabateck,” who is identified as a former president of the Consumer Attorneys of California. The quote continues that “… this report is coming from a coalition of corporations and big businesses and insurance companies. They are taking a very small number of clearly abusive lawsuits, and they are trying to use that as a smoke screen to shield themselves from liability for their bad actions and their injurious conduct directed at Californians.”
 
But other experts point out that other states have taken measures to clear up clogged court systems and California could learn a thing or two from their experiences. William Oxley, a partner at one of the state’s larger firms who is identified as an attorney “… who defends companies in asbestos cases and other product liability and mass tort cases” said he agreed that California is a more plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction, and thought the Legislature and the California Supreme Court need to take action to balance the playing field.
 
We do not typically link to paid websites, but this one offers free access for seven days with registration. So here’s the link.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Democrat Budget Blueprint Ignores Court Crisis

December 26, 2013 By
We’ve been noting that the early plans for our next state budget do not exactly place civil courts funding in the “crisis” category. Indeed, the courts in general are, at best, being placed on the back-burner – even the criminal courts which have a higher political profile than civil justice. The latest example is the recently released “budget blueprint” released by the Democratic Caucus of the state assembly.
 
In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times described the document thus: “Top Assembly Democrats have revealed what they’d like to do with billions of dollars in extra tax revenue that the state is projected to receive, and their top priorities were reassuring: expanding the reserve fund and paying down the debts that Sacramento accumulated over the last decade. Their budget blueprint also calls for a lot of new spending on education and anti-poverty programs, however.”
 
The most passionate appeal for any justice-related funding in the “blueprint” comes amid plans to reduce spending on prison housing. There, the “collaborative justice” efforts get some attention, but that’s hardly noting a billion dollars of court cuts over the past five years. Certainly, most of the issues getting attention are worthy – yet you have to wonder how long we can expect courthouse-related labor unions and others to sit by while the Democrats ignore their concerns. 
 
Read the Times editorial here.
Find the Blueprint here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Paper Calls For More Superior Court Judges

December 24, 2013 By

Program NOTE: No post on Christmas Day! Happy Holidays to all!

A major Inland Empire newspaper is calling for increased funding for civil court judges and staff in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, which have the worst judicial shortfall in California – the only area in worse shape than Los Angels County, according to state research. The Press-Enterprise, in an editorial, says that the California Judicial Council has determined that “… Riverside County, for example, has 76 judges, but needs 138. San Bernardino County has 84 judges, but should have 156. So Riverside County is 62 judges short, while San Bernardino County needs another 82 judges. Those are the worst numbers in the state; the next largest gap is in Los Angeles County, which should have another 41 judges.”
 
The newspaper says that lawmakers should use use “a small share” of a projected budget surplus to address the problem adding that funding a new judge also means funding related support staff. The paper noted that “… a new judgeship costs about $1.65 million the first year, and $909,000 annually in subsequent years — figures which include money for additional court staffing that judges need, such as clerks, secretaries and security.”
 
We can expect more demands for judicial improvements as word circulates of a likely state budget surplus, yet early budget documents have not indicated any anticipated increases. See more here.
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Civil Courts Funding Gets No ‘Governing’ Priority

December 23, 2013 By
It’s only one of the nation’s end-of-year stories, but a “Top 10 Issues” list by Governing magazine, which caters to the policy setters nationally, lets us know where the civil courts funding and capacity issue stands for 2014: Nada, zilch, zero. Not only is it not top 10, but it doesn’t even make the half-dozen “watch” issues.
 
This is a list that includes state policy on drones and self-driving automobiles. That’s right, at least several reporters looking across the national landscape and figured that regulation of self-driving cars, which might be available to consumers by the end of the decade, are a pressing issue. And they noted civil courts capacity not at all… so there’s work to do there. Issues that did make the list include the usual: Immigration, pension reform and minimum wage regulation that’s going nowhere on the federal agenda, at least according to Governing.
 
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