SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A Los Angeles trial judge confronted a top administrator at Friday's Judicial Council meeting over a fundamental issue in the battle over control of California's courts where bureaucrats have increasingly seen themselves as the equals if not the employers of the judges. "The priority should be to keep the courthouse doors open," said Los Angeles Judge Burt Pines.
As was widely expected, an IT project that has been pushed by the bureaucrats, and that is now in deep trouble, also took a drubbing.
"Don't force the rest of us to abandon basic access to justice in favor of feeding this technology beast with trial court trust funds," said San Francisco Superior Court Presiding Judge Katherine Feinstein, who last week announced drastic layoffs for the court.
"Your AOC staff has overseen the expenditure of at least $400 million on the still-dysfunctional Court Case Management System," said Feinstein, the daughter of California's senior U.S. senator. "Despite these huge expenditures, CCMS is not fully operational in a single county."
The cuts to San Francisco which should cause the closure of 25 courtrooms are part of a statewide funding crisis for the courts, resulting from Gov. Jerry Brown's budget passed by the Legislature last month. Friday's emergency meeting of California's Judicial Council was called over the portion of the budget that cut $350 million from the courts.
In a closed meeting last week, judges and court clerks recommended staggered cuts this year, with more pain doled out to the administrative agency and a little less for the trial courts. The meeting's judges and court clerks recommended a 12 percent cut for the bureaucracy, 9.7 percent cut for the appellate courts and 6.8 percent for the trial courts.
That recommendation was adopted unanimously by the council.
The fireworks came over next year's cuts, which are expected to be worse. Last week's closed meeting resulted in a recommendation of across-the-board cuts of 15.2 percent for next year, applied equally to the bureaucracy and the trial courts.
Judge Pines took issue with that recommendation, arguing that the central, 1,000-member corps of administrators could take a much bigger slice out of its funds.
Pines had an ally in fellow Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley. Both are voting members of the council, which has 21 voting members, including the chief justice.
Wesley moved to consider cutting more from the administrative office, saying he does not think the AOC has the same priority as the courts.
"The AOC is not an adjudicative agency," Wesley said. "The council should explicitly recognize that additional reductions to the AOC may be made and not limit it to 15.2 percent."
Pines argued that the trial courts, as the place where justice is supposed to take place, should be considered the top funding priority. Addressing the deputy director of the administrative office, Ron Overholt, the judge asked, "We are asked to make a policy decision that all these entities should share the reduction with the same percentage. The AOC, the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, in a sense are viewed as of equal importance. Is that implicit?"
"You can see it's not equally spread," Overholt replied, referring to the current budget cuts.
Pines said he was talking about next year, to which Overholt said, "I think it's fair that we will deal with the budget crisis as a branch."