As the governor and legislators inch closer to a $26 billion budget-fixing deal, a bit of a mystery has surfaced over draft language that never made it into the court’s budget trailer bill.
It seems that at one point during negotiations among lawmakers, court administrators, union representatives, finance officials and staffers, the unrelated issues of trial courts’ budgeting and presiding judges came into play. And, depending on your point of view, what happened was either inconsequential chatter about technical budget stuff or an attempted power grab by the Administrative Office of the Courts.
You’re hoping it’s a naked power grab, aren’tcha? Read on, after the jump …
The commotion was mentioned in this weekend's Sacramento Bee, at the bottom of an article about courthouse furloughs. We asked H.D. Palmer, a Department of Finance spokesman, what all the hubbub was about. Here’s what he forwarded in an email:
We had put forward trailer bill language meant to address some fiscal issues and problems with getting timely, complete, and accurate budgetary information at the trial court level. Our language provided the AOC with authority similar to what DOF has with regard to receiving fiscal information from state departments.
In response, the AOC put forward language that went beyond the fiscal authorities we proposed to include changes to the functional authority of the trial courts, one provision of which would have allowed the Judicial Council to appoint presiding judges and make other ‘centralized’ decisions. We did not ask the AOC to propose language that would be as sweeping as what they brought forward, but we did ask them for suggestions on ways we could get better information and data from the trial court system in order to try to control costs.
So was the AOC really trying to grab decision-making power over local courts’ spending and appointing of presiding judges? Nope, said both the AOC’s chief executive, Bill Vickrey, and its head lobbyist, Curt Child.
On local budgeting, “The system is based on outcomes and not trying to manage day-to-day operations of a very complex court,” Vickrey said. The Department of Finance was pushing the changes, he said.
As for naming presiding judges, “The chief [justice] has been firmly opposed to any changes in that area,” Vickrey said. The discussed changes were merely an attempt to clarify in statute existing PJ appointment procedures already spelled out in Rules of Court, Child said.
So why does the Department of Finance have such a different account of events? Nobody seems to know.
Whatever happened, several judges got wind of the draft language — or at least one critic’s interpretation of it — and reportedly went ballistic. Talk of presiding judges and AOC local-budget authority never made it into the bill.
Now negotiations have turned to a possible provision that would provide more public access to AOC budget and spending figures. No deal had been reached as of Monday afternoon.
— Cheryl Miller
Comments