Legal Pad

Is New Funding Formula Key to Governor's Judicial Happiness?

[Cheryl Miller]

In the quest to answer Governor Jerry Brown's call to make trial court funding more equitable, a group of judges and court executives may have come up with a solution.

The Funding Methodology Subcommittee, a Judicial Council bunch led by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Laurie Earl, has unveiled a model that purports to link individual court allocations with their workloads, not their historical -- and historically unequal -- funding levels.

The formula is complex and a little wonky, and it still has some holes. It would be phased in through 2018. Bottom line, some-better off courts would lose money under the plan while others that have gone begging would gain. But Earl and her subcommittee colleagues aren't making public yet the full list of winners and losers.

"It's a very, very rough draft, and there's more tweaking to be done," she said Tuesday after briefing the Trial Court Funding Working Group. (That's the panel appointed by the governor and chief justice to analyze the success of 16 years of state funding for courts).

She did say her own court would lose funding under the plan. So would Santa Clara County Superior Court. Courts in Riverside, San Bernardino, Kings, Riverside and Los Angeles would also benefit, at least under the formula's first draft.

In addition to tweaking its model, Earl's group has a formidable sales job ahead of it. Will judges from courts that would lose money still back the plan? Will organized labor?

The group's best hope may be convincing the governor that the funding formula is fair, or at least more fair than the current method. A satisfied governor may be more inclined to retore branch funding, and that should mean more money for everyone. That may be why the proposal seems to have some momentum behind it.

Earl's subcommittee is presenting its model to judges and court executives in private meetings around the state. The Sacramento judge said she expects to make the proposal final before it goes to the Judicial Council in late April.

New state budget cuts $150 million more from judiciary

[Cheryl Miller]

The Legislature will consider a revised budget Wednesday that includes $150 million in unallocated cuts to the judicial branch.

Curtis Child, chief lobbyist for the Administrative Office of the Courts, said the hit will “definitely cut deep into court operations” and could lead to a new round of court closures and cutbacks to programs, including courthouse construction and the Court Case Management System.

“These kinds of reductions on top of the $200 million in reductions that were made in spring would be absolutely devastating to the branch,” Child said.

Legislative Democrats have cobbled together a budget that relies almost entirely on cuts, fund shifts and deferred payments after failing to reach a deal with Republicans to put tax extensions on the ballot. Without the tax issue, Democrats can approve most of the budget on a majority vote – without a single “aye” from Republicans.

The budget would also reinstate the sale of 11 state-owned buildings, including the attorney general building in Sacramento and the Supreme Court’s home in the Civic Center Complex. Gov. Jerry Brown canceled the much-criticized sale in February, which led to a lawsuit by the investor group that agreed to buy the buildings.

The Judicial Council has yet to vote on a plan to absorb the $200 million cuts prescribed by the original state budge enacted in March. The Legislature directed the Council to offset most of the cuts with money from construction funds.

The latest round of cuts is sure to be a central theme in Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye’s State of the Judiciary address to the Legislature on June 30.

 Update: Just before 9:30 p.m., the chief justice issued the following statement in response to the proposed budget cut:

“This budget proposal is devastating and crippling to the judicial branch and to the public it serves. Courts have taken massive reductions over the past few years, and already took $200 million in reductions for next year.

“Courts affect every part of our state’s life — including convicting criminals and freeing the innocent; enhancing public safety; enforcing contracts; providing a forum for resolving business disputes; and protecting children, the elderly, consumers, the environment — in short, protecting the people’s rights.

"With these cuts courts cannot provide these fundamental services or protect the rights of Californians. By marginalizing the courts, California strikes a blow against justice."

 

Rose Bird Makes Campaign Appearance

[Greg Mitchell]

Meg Whitman's campaign released a new ad Friday called "Judicial Failure." The news of Ron George's retirement is a convenient reminder, the narrator says, of the governor's important role in selecting judges -- and a good hook for linking Brown to Rose Bird. Brown named Bird, who at the time had no judicial branch experience, to the chief's job in 1977 only to see her voted out of office by irate voters nine years later.

Not surprisingly, the ad details how Bird overruled every death sentence to come before her. 

But the ad also asserts, with undated, unexplained attribution to the Los Angeles Times, that Brown was known for "cronyism and lack of quality" in his judicial appointments, and suggests many of his judicial appointments were given in exchange for campaign funds.

You can see the ad here.

Jerry Brown Riffs With Dr. Phil (And Kelly Osbourne)

[Cheryl Miller]

He wasn’t accused of cheating on his wife, and he wasn’t there to reveal a shocking secret from his past. But there was Jerry Brown this afternoon, sitting next to America’s favorite TV shrink, Dr. Phil.

California’s attorney general was invited, along with an unusual assortment of guests, to talk about the problem of prescription painkiller abuse. The episode follows the recent death of former child star Corey Haim.

Brown detailed a growing problem of criminals who steal doctors’ identities, fraudulently order prescription pads and then recruit homeless people to purchase Vicodin, OxyContin and other controlled drugs that they later sell.

Jerry Brown Protects Gay Veterans' Benefits

Look for rainbow flags to start flying at state-run veterans homes.

On New Year’s Eve, Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office issued an opinion stating that gay, lesbian and transgender military vets living in California are entitled to all state-funded veteran benefits, including veterans’ housing. And, yep, their same-sex domestic partners are covered too.

“We take this opportunity,” Los Angeles-based Deputy AG Marc Nolan wrote, “to make clear that, under the laws of California, neither military veterans nor their registered domestic partners may be discriminated against in the provision of state-funded veterans’ benefits on the basis of their gender or sexual orientation, the federal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy notwithstanding.”

The opinion had been sought by the California Commission on the Status of Women, which noted that the federal policy has contributed to “a widespread belief among military veterans that discrimination against LGBT veterans is acceptable in any military setting.”

The opinion notes that state anti-discrimination laws prevent the denial of state-funded benefits, including preferences in civil service exams, college tuition waivers and property tax exemptions.

Even gays and lesbians discharged from the military because of their sexual orientation get the benefits.

“It does not appear that a service member’s sexual orientation, in and of itself,” Nolan wrote, “will cause him or her to receive an ‘other than honorable conditions’ discharge, and this will be true even if the member’s sexual orientation formed the basis of a ‘homosexual conduct’ separation from service under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

Look for disco nights at the veterans homes. The Village People’s “In the Navy” will likely be a popular request.

— Mike McKee

Jerry Brown's Secret Tapes Nowhere Near as Cool as Nixon's

Legal Pad isn’t sure whether to be offended or pleased not to have been among the reporters that AG Jerry Brown’s ex-flak, Scott Gerber, surreptitiously recorded.

Either way, the transcripts (.pdf) of those conversations between Brown and reporters, five of which have been made public by the attorney general’s office, make for some entertaining reading.

At times defensive, more often philosophical, Brown touches on his well-known family’s history, analyzes the governor’s race that he’s still not officially a part of, and mocks Hillary Clinton’s political resume.

"Didn't work with Mother Teresa," after the jump ...

“She didn’t work with Mother Theresa (sic),” a transcript of an April interview between Brown and an AP reporter reads. “She didn’t spend six months working in a Zen Buddhism. She didn’t take Linda Ronstandt (sic) to Africa. She didn’t have her own astronaut. I had Rusty Triker, an astronaut. I put him on the state energy commission.”

Later, he bristles at a reporter’s suggestion that soliciting thousands of dollars in charitable donations from businesses regulated by his office could pose the appearance of a conflict.

“The AG is enforcing environmental, labor, banking education … so you could say we regulate the entire state,” Brown says to a Los Angeles Times reporter. “… So by your logic, then, everyone is a question because the AG can sue anybody, and in fact does.”

A report (.pdf) released Monday night by the attorney general’s office concludes that Gerber acted alone when he recorded reporters’ conversations without their knowledge. Chief Assistant Attorney General Dane Gillette wrote that Gerber had been told in late 2008 by Chief Deputy Attorney General James Humes not to tape phone calls — Gillette doesn’t say what led Humes to issue the directive — but the press secretary did so anyway.

Gillette concludes, however, that Gerber didn’t break any laws because the reporters’ conversations did not constitute “confidential communications” that require a participant’s consent to recording.

Gerber, a former communications director for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was Brown’s third press secretary in as many years.

— Cheryl Miller
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Twitter Feeds You Democrats

Twitter loves Jerry Brown. But does Jerry Brown love Twitter?

The Associated Press reports that Twitter, which is apparently still the social media rage, is inspiring Republican rage in here in California.  Seems that when you sign up for the service — which, like Muzak in an elevator, is designed to help stamp out any brief time for actual coherent, trivia-free reflection in your waking life — it suggests a horde of quasi-famous or semi-interesting people you don't know, whose one-sentence proclamations you might want to never, ever miss.

And in California, it suggests Democratic political candidates. Only Democrats. Sayeth the AP:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is on the suggested user list and has 1.2 million followers. His likely opponent for the Democratic nomination, Attorney General Jerry Brown, also made the list and has 960,000 followers, even though he is not a declared candidate and has posted the fewest tweets of all the gubernatorial hopefuls. None of the three Republican candidates is on the list, and each has fewer than 5,000 followers.

Wait — Jerry Brown has the most verbal restraint?

Twitter's political monkeyplay is all fun and games, until that Glenn Beck guy gets ahold of it, fakes some righteous indignation and fear ("I am terrified about where this will go next," he'll say. "They're gonna force us to read the Huffington Post's RSS feed, and then They'll euthanize our grandmothers!"), and turns millions of paleo-Americans into frothing anti-Twitter crusaders, hell-bent on the destruction of the near-ubiquitous networking site and ... um ...

Never mind.  Carry on with your cheap, flagrant (and terrifying!) partisanship, Twitter.  Go, you!

— Brian McDonough

In Brown's Opinion, Governor Can Play Hardball

Legal opinions issued by the attorney general’s office are usually dishwater dull. But not the one Jerry Brown sent out today.

Brown was responding to lawmakers angered with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s threats to veto hundreds of bills by Sunday’s deadline if they don’t produce a water bill. Such a threat, they suggested in a letter to Brown, must surely amount to extortion.

Nope, Brown replied in his own letter today (.pdf). The governor’s veto is a long-recognized and powerful executive tool, the state’s top lawyer wrote. The separation of powers doctrine “counsels against” questioning the legality of the governor’s threats.

Brown goes on to cite several scholars and even quotes 19th century German President Otto van Bismark: “There are two things you don’t want to see being made – sausage and legislation.”

Brown’s closing line is the kicker, however. “Compromise in the rough-and-tumble legislative process is not achieved by doilies and tea.”

Spoken like a former, and would-be again, governor.

—  Cheryl Miller

Brown Puts Credit Agencies on Hot Seat Over Securities Crisis

Attorney General Jerry Brown today issued subpoenas to three leading credit rating agencies to find out why they slapped top-notch ratings on mortgage-backed securities that would eventually crash and burn.

"Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch put their seal of approval on high-risk mortgage-backed securities, recklessly giving stellar ratings to shaky assets that proved toxic to the entire financial system," Brown said in a prepared statement. "This investigation is meant to determine how these agencies could get it so wrong and whether they violated California law in the process."

If this type of legal crusade sounds familiar it should. At least three other states’ attorneys general have investigated the relationship between the rating agencies and the securities issuers they evaluated. And numerous pension funds have filed lawsuits, some dating back to 2007, over their losses.

But if Brown is simply jumping on the bandwagon, there’s plenty of room, said Nanci Nishimura, a partner with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, the Peninsula firm that’s handling plenty of credit rating-related litigation these days.

“All the smoke hasn’t even come out of this volcano yet,” Nishimura said. “It’s about time the state started taking notice and started doing something about this.”

Representatives of the three rating agencies either declined to comment or said their companies would cooperate with Brown’s investigation.

Brown has given the agencies until Oct. 19 to respond to his request for information.

— Cheryl Miller
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Jerry Brown Takes On House-Hating Pleasanton

Attorney General Jerry Brown isn’t shy about diving into disputes involving land-use decisions and greenhouse gas emissions. Just ask San Bernardino County. 

But Brown put a new twist on things Wednesday when he announced that he’s joining a lawsuit challenging the city of Pleasanton’s cap on residential housing.

He’s against housing, he’s for housing … It’s so confusing! Relief, after the jump.