SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The finance director for California's court bureaucracy is moving, after a series of attacks on the bureaucracy from the Legislature and trial court judges angry over financial matters. Departing finance director Stephen Nash is taking a new job as head clerk in San Bernardino's trial courts.
Nash will fill a job that recently opened up due to the retirement of the longtime chief clerk for San Bernardino, and he will join two other insiders from the Administrative Office of the Courts in taking jobs running big Southern California trial courts in San Diego and Orange County.
Nash declined to answer questions about the reason for his departure from the highest echelon of the courts' statewide bureaucracy, but his exit follows shortly after a wave of retirements within the agency under fire for financial decisions that took money from trial courts during a time of dire need in order to to fund projects favored by the administrative office.
Shortly after two legislators called for the removal of AOC director William Vickrey over allegations of the agency's mishandling of a massive $1.9 billion court IT project, the embattled administrator announced his retirement effective in August. Vickrey said he had been intending to retire for over a year.
The retirement announcement of Ken Kann, AOC information gatekeeper, followed two days later, on March 24. Kann was embroiled in a 2010 lawsuit that alleged he had pushed a lower-level staffer out the door after the employee complained of the bureaucracy's lavish spending on receptions, meetings in hotels, wine tastings and other annual events.
On March 30, Sheila Calabro, director of the AOC's Southern Regional office, announced her departure for June. Last November, Calabro was removed from her position as overseer of the IT project called the Court Case Management System. Before her replacement, Calabro had been in charge of the day-to-day management of the project, but the AOC shifted her to co-chair of a new supervisory committee.
As finance director, Nash was often seen at meetings of the Judicial Council, a body of judges responsible for making decisions that affect the state's 58 trial courts, giving presentations on behalf of the AOC, the staff agency intended to work directly under the council in carrying out policy. Along with Graeme Finley of accounting firm Grant Thornton, Nash presented a highly positive cost-benefit analysis of CCMS, a report that the state auditor said the agency should have conducted almost a decade ago before it launched the project.
Last December, Nash asked the council for $87 million from a disputed court trust fund for technology projects including CCMS. Judges vehemently protested, saying the fund was meant for keeping courts open, not funding IT projects, and that the council had no authority to draw from the fund.
In April 2010, when the council voted to reject a plea from Los Angeles Superior Court for $47 million in emergency funds to keep its doors open, Nash said the court had "overestimated" the amount of employees it would have to lay off in October 2010, as well as the amount needed to avoid such staff cuts.
Nash will be replacing the outgoing Court Executive Officer Tressa Kentner, who retires next month.
In an interview, Kentner, who has put in 16 years at the San Bernardino Court, said Nash will bring the "expertise in budgets" that he gleaned from his time with the AOC, one of the qualities the court had been seeking in her successor.