SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - In the wake of scolding from the state auditor, the California Judicial Council's top committee on Friday tried to put its hands around a pair of ghosts that still haunt the judiciary, technology fiascos and staff excess.
The Friday meeting of the council's executive committee followed a legislative hearing two days earlier where State Auditor Elaine Howle presented an audit documenting the judicial bureaucracy's waste of hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone to the trial courts during the state's long-running budget crisis.
Howle noted that a 2012 internal report by the judiciary's Strategic Evaluation Committee had come to similar and sometimes more strongly worded conclusions. But she said little had changed as a result of the SEC's lengthy chronicle of waste and mismanagement.
Friday, when the executive committee approached the old issue of ruinous technology projects, tensions rose quickly over a claim that Los Angeles Superior Court still owes $2.4 million for financial software imposed on the trial courts.
The administrative office mandated use of the Phoenix Financial software as an outgrowth of 1997 legislation transferring trial court funding from counties to the state. But L.A. Superior Court refused to pay for software it had not asked for and did not want.
Among its many suggestions for reform, the 2012 SEC report had called for making the software optional. The obligation to pay for the software was then transferred to the so-called Improvement and Modernization Fund, one of several pots of money within the bureaucratic structure.
In the last fiscal year, that fund paid $11 million for the software. A fact sheet from the Administrative Office of the Courts say the software is run by SAP. That company is connected to Deloitte Consulting, which says on its website that "Deloitte and SAP have worked together for more than a decade."
Deloitte in turn developed the Court Case Management Software under the supervision of the court administrative office, at a cost of a half-billion dollars to California. That software project was then abandoned in 2012.
The Improvement and Modernization Fund, which continues to pay for the Phoenix software from SAP, is now on the brink of insolvency.
When the old $2.4 million debt from Los Angeles come up at Friday's meeting, Judge James Brandlin from Los Angeles said in stern tones, "We have some concerns about whether this is truly optional and whether we want to be part of that. As long as it's optional that's one issue. But if it's being forced on a particular court and the court doesn't want it, then the court's response is 'why should I pay for something I don't want?'"
He added that he didn't think the underlying issue of forcing courts to use certain services had been resolved.
"There are some services many courts use and some courts don't use at all that are still being charged to many of the courts. I think this is a delicate issue and I don't recommend further discussion today in this forum."
Judge Charles Wachob, who chaired the 2012 Strategic Evaluation Committee, is a nonvoting member of the executive committee. On Friday, he told the executive committee that his group still considers the matter unsettled.