SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A letter from a Santa Barbara judge sent on apparently fake letterhead earlier this week to California's chief justice attacked the influence of Los Angeles judges on a controversial bill pending in the state legislature, and it brought a swift and strong reaction from Los Angeles late Friday.
In a letter sent to California's chief justice this week, Santa Barbara Judge James Herman wrote that results from a recent survey of California judges were skewed in favor of AB 1208, legislation that would return fiscal and policy authority to the state's trial courts. The results were skewed, said Herman, because of the size of the Los Angeles contingent of judges.
One of the controversial aspects of Herman's letter is that he apparently grabbed art from the website of the California Judges Association, the dominant, oldline group representing a broad spectrum of California's judges, and then pasted it on the top of his own letter to the chief. Herman is a member of the judges association.
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye is on record as opposed to AB 1208, and Herman appears to have her favor. The chief recently appointed the Santa Barbara judge to chair a committee looking into the merits and management of a highly controversial IT project pushed by the judiciary's central administrators.
In a sharp reaction to Herman's letter using "faux letterhead," as one official put it, six judges from Los Angeles wrote to the head of the judge association, San Bernardino Judge Keith Davis of San Bernardino, condemning the letter and asking for an emergency meeting of the association's board to look into the matter.
"We request that an executive committee meeting be held by close of business today, preferably 3:30 p.m. at which time we plan to request that you immediately advise the Chief Justice in writing on our official letterhead that the letter from Judge Herman was unauthorized, misleading, and does not represent the views of CJA as a whole," wrote judges Kevin Brazile, James Dabney, Mary Thornton House, Charles "Tim" McCoy, Joanne O'Donnell and Zaven Sinanian
In response to Herman's general charge that Los Angeles had influenced by its numbers the overall tabulation of votes, the six Los Angeles judges asked for a breakdown of the voting percentage within each district of the judges association, to be included in the letter to the chief. "The letter should include a breakdown by district of CJA survey results," said the letter from Los Angeles.
The judges association, as a whole, has officially decided to remain neutral on AB 1208 after polling its 2600-judge membership earlier this year and finding them closely divided. The overall totals from the survey a slender majority of judges supporting the bill to return control of the purse to the local courts.
In the Santa Barbara judge's letter to the chief, Herman says he is writing as a CJA representative for eight central coast counties, arguing that the slim majority in favor of the legislation is due to the overwhelming response from Los Angeles and weighted by by the large number of judges from Los Angeles.
"No doubt," he said, "a closer look at other districts would show additional significant deviations from the averaged numbers set forth in the survey." Herman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.