Senate Passes Bill to Help Counties Build New Courts

The Senate approved legislation Thursday that would allow Orange County to raise an additional $5 million a year to build new courthouse facilities.

The bill, by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), was approved on a 35-0 vote without debate and was sent to the Assembly. It would allow 11 counties to double their surcharges on traffic tickets and on fines collected from sentenced criminals. Orange County now imposes a $2 surcharge for every $10 in non-parking fines.

The bill also would allow the county to double its flat surcharge of $1.50 on every parking fine.

All the money collected through the extra charges would be put into two special funds for building courthouse facilities and could be used for no other purpose.

45 New Courtrooms Needed

Bergeson said the estimated $5 million that the measure would generate annually in Orange County would go toward a planned expansion of the courthouse complex in Santa Ana and the construction of a Juvenile Court building in Orange.

Projections of the county’s Superior Court needs through the year 2010 call for 45 new courtrooms. The Juvenile Courts building would hold 10 courtrooms.

Bergeson said the surcharges should be viewed as “user fees,” forcing those who use the courthouses and jails to pay for their construction.

“Everyone wishes they had other funding sources to draw from, but there isn’t anything else available at this time,” Bergeson said.

According to the state Judicial Council, Bergeson’s bill would mean that in some counties that have received permission for other surcharges, the state and local assessments would be more than the fines themselves.

In Orange County, the $4 local surcharge on every $10 or portion of $10, plus the state’s existing $5 surcharge on the same amounts, could mean a $27 surcharge on top of a fine of $21.

But Bergeson said she believes that the charges could serve as a deterrent to lawbreakers.

Similar Bill Killed

“When the fines get extremely high, I think the people are more cautious about breaking the rules that bring about the imposition of those fines,” she said.

Bergeson’s measure is almost identical to one approved by the Senate last year but killed in the Assembly in a move by former Assemblyman Richard Robinson, a Garden Grove Democrat who gave up his seat in the Legislature in an unsuccessful bid for Congress last November.

In opposing the bill last year, Robinson said it was a stop-gap measure that would undermine the chances for meaningful reform of the state’s system of paying for the operation of trial courts. Bergeson said she expects this year’s bill to have an easier time in the Assembly now that Robinson is gone.