Superior Judges Back Escondido Court Package

San Diego County’s Superior Court judges voted Monday to recommend that a new courts complex be built as quickly as possible in Escondido--and eventually in Vista as well--despite a county staff recommendation that new courts in North County be built only in Vista.

The judges’ recommendation will be forwarded to the county Board of Supervisors today, although board debate is expected to be delayed a week at the request of Supervisor John MacDonald.

Vista city officials have pledged to help build a seven-story courthouse alongside the existing courts complex in their city, to accommodate 31 more courtrooms to serve North County. Part of Vista’s offer includes the donation of 6 acres next to the existing courthouse site.

The county staff recommended the Vista expansion partly because of the logistics problems, and additional costs, of operating two courts complexes in North County.

But the caveat to the Vista proposal is that the complex would be funded primarily by revenue to be generated by last year’s passage of Proposition A, a half-cent increase in the county’s sales tax to help pay for courts and jails expansion. That measure, however, has been challenged in court as unlawful, and county officials don’t know when--or if--proceeds from the measure will become available.

For that reason, most of San Diego County’s 61 Superior Court judges voted to endorse Escondido’s proposal for a 22-courtroom complex that would essentially split North County’s courts into two centers, Greer said Monday.

Escondido had promised $10 million in a combination of cash, land donations and property trades toward construction of its courthouse. The rest of the construction cost would be financed by the county’s share of Escondido’s redevelopment agency profits. Because of that, Escondido officials have boasted that the 22-courtroom complex could be built without any reliance on the now-frozen Proposition A funds.

Greer said 51 of the 61 judges voted to support the construction of new courts in both Escondido and Vista; six voted to support new courts in Escondido and four voted for new courts only in Vista.

In contrast, Vista Municipal Court judges voted last week unanimously to support the expansion of the Vista courts complex.

Greer said the majority of the Superior Court judges favor new courts in both cities because, by the time money is available to build courts in Vista to supplement those in Escondido, both complexes will be needed.

“In order to meet both the long-term needs and the short-term needs of the Superior Court in North County, we recommend approval and implementation of each of the two proposals,” Greer said.

“We need all of them,” he said. “This is not a North County problem. This is a countywide problem. Our criminal case load in Vista is tremendous, and a recent decision by the California Supreme Court allows persons to be tried any place in the county.

“That means that, when we’re filled up in Vista, we’ll be trying North County’s criminal cases in San Diego. In two years, we’ll be at a civil (lawsuit) shutdown as a result of hearing nothing but criminal cases in this county.

“Unless we find a solution as fast as possible to build courtrooms in North County, the result will be that the whole county will be disadvantaged,” Greer said.

“Escondido has a way to build the courts, and that’s our good fortune because there’s no money elsewhere to build them,” he said.

Greer said he wasn’t sure what influence the Superior Court judges will have on the decision by the supervisors.

“But I hope they’ll pay attention to the fact that they are lighting a fuse that will blow up in all of our faces in three years, and that Escondido is offering a solution. I don’t care where the courts are built, but they’ve got to be built now.”

MacDonald said he will ask fellow supervisors for a week’s delay in discussing the courthouse issue in order to provide Escondido officials time to rebut the county staff recommendation favoring Vista.