SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A budget meeting for California's courts on Wednesday was trailed by complaints from union representatives saying they did not receive timely notice and were shut out of the proceedings when an audio system failed.
Legislative staffers were also cut off when the audiocast went down due to an unexplained "system failure."
While the Administrative Office of the Courts set up a conference line for a few committee members, there were not enough lines for the legislative aides and labor reps who wanted to hear how big chunks of the courts' budget are being divided.
"We have a vested interest in trial court funding; how the funds get distributed and what purposes they are establishing priorities around," Michelle Castro with the Service Employees International Union said in an interview. "We're at a very critical juncture in the trial courts. We are going through extreme amounts of cuts on the backs of court workers."
The advisory committee for trial court budgets approved roughly $72 million for programs supporting the trial courts and technology projects. The allocations included $18 million to maintain interim versions of the now-defunct Court Case Management System and the Arizona server that hosts it.
An additional $6.9 million request to update the network infrastructure for several courts was deferred until October, along with a $600,000 request from Orange County Superior Court to upgrade its telecommunications network.
"We are all going to be relying more and more on technology but we have to approach these things with care and caution, and make sure these types of expenses are what we should be doing," said committee member and Santa Clara head clerk David Yamasaki.
Earlier this year, the Legislature approved $60 million in additional funding for the trial courts, with specific instructions that it be spent on keeping courthouses open and saving court jobs. The union representatives and legislative staffers wanted to listen in on Wednesday's discussion to see if those instructions were being followed.
Libby Sanchez, a lobbyist for the Laborers' International Union of North America, reported in a letter to the committee that ten new layoffs had taken place in Riverside County since the extra $60 million was given to the courts by the Legislature, and one of its courts had closed for two work days.
"Our big issue is the Legislature said this $60 million was directly supposed to go to making sure the court doors were open. Is that really happening?" Sanchez said. "We can't wrap our head around the fact that, with the funding we got, why there still has to be layoffs and a two-day court closure in Blythe."
"If it's not being allocated appropriately to ensure what the Legislature intended, that's our problem. That's why we're concerned," she added. "That's why we were frustrated this meeting wasn't really a public meeting."
During Wednesday's committee meeting, which was open to any members of the press who made their way to the court administrative office headquarters in downtown San Francisco, judges and bureaucrats grappled with a list of funding needs to present to lawmakers in budget proposals for fiscal year 2014-15.
A survey among the state's 58 trial courts, discussed at the meeting, shows that employee benefit increases are a top priority for courts. The committee agreed to recommend that California's court rule-making body, the Judicial Council, pursue those benefits with the Legislature.