Municipal Court Forges Its Future : Justice: New downtown courthouse is just latest plan in the court’s series of proposals to improve the legal system.

When the San Diego Municipal Court disclosed last month that it was about to break ground on a new downtown courthouse for civil cases, the news marked yet another example of the court’s expanding reputation for growth and public service.

Quietly, the Municipal Court has been studying or implementing a series of innovative plans, some based on fancy technology, some rooted in common sense. They include programs to put off or actually eliminate the hassle of going to court in some cases, to sharply reduce long lines and to replace legalese with plain English.

In the works, or working already, are fax machine programs, computer plans, plain English forms, updated telephone systems and traffic ticket centers--not to mention a brand-new downtown courthouse.

No outside consultant shamed the judges and bureaucrats in charge of the court into the reforms. Judges and administrators generated the changes themselves, driven by a tight court budget.

“Out of necessity springs the incentive to be innovative,” said Judge Patricia Cowett, the current presiding judge of the court.

“When you try some of the traditional ways of doing things and the resources are not there to continue to do things the old way . . . it forces you to take a hard look at what possibly you can fashion to address problems,” Cowett said. “Out of that necessity does come a new idea or two.”

It also apparently generates a remarkable can-do feeling among a third camp, one not often linked with the concept of hard work--the 9-to-5 court clerks.

For the past six months, budget woes have eliminated overtime for the staff, according to D. Kent Pedersen, the court administrator. Still, spirit is so high that the traffic clerks at the court’s Kearny Mesa facility slashed the pending backlog in half, from about 1,000 hours of work to 507 as of last week, he said.

Pedersen, who has been administrator for 11 years, said the can-do spirit was sparked by the announcement last year that the court’s budget this fiscal year was being trimmed $300,000. The state cut the money that helps counties fund courts, meaning financially strapped San Diego County had to cut corners even tighter, Pedersen said.

Most of the court’s fiscal year 1991 budget of $15.4 million goes toward salaries, he said. The court employs about 300 people, he said.

Though $300,000 is only 2% of $15.4 million, the cut got people wondering if there might be more cuts, and if there were more efficient ways of doing business, Pedersen said.

“Our response upon finding that in the current budget year that we had $300,000 taken out was to find cheaper, easier, better ways, less staff-intensive ways, less confusing ways, for the public to deal with us,” Pedersen said.

“We said, ‘Let’s find ways to cut out paperwork, reduce confusion and keep people out of the courthouse to the maximum extent possible,’ ” Pedersen said.

Because it handles traffic tickets, processes minor criminal cases and oversees small claims disputes, the Municipal Court is the branch of the justice system that the average citizen is most likely to meet.

The San Diego Municipal Court handles cases from San Diego and Poway. Cases from other areas of the county go to either the North County, South Bay or El Cajon municipal courts, which are run separately.

The court’s staff presented more than a dozen proposals to the court’s 28 judges last November. Some staffers weren’t that formal. The more experienced clerks at the Kearny Mesa facility got together, called themselves the “Hit Team” and began tackling backlogs, Pedersen said.

“My opinion is that, if you really are convinced of a need and are willing to look for innovative solutions, and you look hard enough and with enough determination, you can actually solve your problems,” Cowett said. “It’s refreshing.”

The new building was a top priority because the court handles about 25,000 civil cases annually. It also processes about 20,000 to 25,000 small claims cases and 380,000 criminal and traffic cases, Pedersen said.

The civil courts figured to be the easiest to spin off because they are virtually self-contained, Pedersen said. The clerks who work on civil cases handle those alone, he said. Municipal Courts handle civil lawsuits of $25,000 or less, and Superior Courts decide disputes over $25,000.

The new building, on 4th Avenue just north of Ash Street, had been in the planning for about two years, but, in the past month, details really came together, Pedersen said. On May 28, the county Board of Supervisors is due to vote on the $6.2 million, four-courtroom, six-story project.

Court officials said they expect approval because it is a financially attractive deal, financed by surcharges collected on certain criminal case fines, and because county staff members--not court administrators--put it together.

Pedersen said court officials made a tactical decision to stay out of the design, bidding and funding processes as much as possible. The county pays people it considers expert at those jobs to do them, so there was no reason for experts at the business of running a court to get involved, Pedersen said.

“I think it’s a demonstration of what you can do when you have the will to accomplish the end, even with limited resources and tight budgets everywhere,” Cowett said.

Ironically, the San Diego Superior Court’s downtown civil court expansion plan came to an end the day after the Municipal Court announced its building plan.

Frustrated by the developer’s financing problems and stalled lease negotiations, county supervisors voted unanimously on April 23 to kill a plan to build nine courtrooms for the Superior Court at the El Cortez Hotel Convention Center, at Beech Street and 8th Avenue.

New courtrooms for the Superior Court could be four years away, county planners said after the vote. If the Municipal Court building gets the green light May 28, the six-story building could be open in about a year, Pedersen said.

On April 22, the same day the Municipal Court announced its building plans, it began a program to allow arraignments by fax machine. An arraignment, when charges are formally read and pleas of guilty or innocent are entered, usually marks an accused criminal’s first appearance in court.

The fax plan, a six-month experiment, is available only to private defense attorneys in certain minor criminal cases. “This is a ‘why haven’t we thought of this sort of thing before?’ sort of thing,” Pedersen said.

“There’s often no defensible reason for people to come into court and for their lawyers to come into court, for a two-minute arraignment,” he said. “It’s not just time. Lawyers cost money.”

After six months, the plan will be reviewed and probably expanded to more cases and more lawyers, he said.

In the meantime, the court is installing a major computer system, intending to wean lawyers from legal papers and make the job easier for court clerks.

Civil and small claims cases have been put on the computer since last October, he said. In a couple of months, criminal and traffic cases ought to be on line, he said.

The computer system, he said, is the first step toward “a paperless courtroom environment, or at least paper on demand, so that when people come into the courtroom and appear for a case, (the judge and clerk) are not looking for the case file. We can simply pull it up on the screen.

“You can’t have between 400,000 and 500,000 cases in one court and expect to be able to find every single piece of paper that’s ever come across your desk,” Pedersen said. “You’ve got to have an integrated system.”

Within months, attorneys should be able to gain access to the system from their offices with a telephone and a modem, he said. Public access is about a year away, though both attorney and public access may be delayed while privacy concerns--about possibly sensitive information in the files--are debated, he said.

For now, paper forms remain a reality, Pedersen said. But a special court committee is rewriting them, aiming to replace legalese with plain speech, he said.

“It’s a simplification of the forms, a consolidation of the forms,” Pedersen said. “Criminal, traffic, civil, everywhere.” The new forms will be introduced through the year, he said.

The first batch of plain English forms are already in use at the Kearny Mesa traffic facility. The forms alert accused traffic violators of their rights, tell how to post bail and announce eligibility for traffic school.

Within the next month, a new telephone system at Kearny Mesa will replace the existing recorded message. Callers with touch-tone phones can punch different buttons to learn about traffic school, bail, court hours and the like, said Sandra Carter, the court’s assistant administrator.

If that’s not satisfying, the line eventually connects callers with a clerk, virtually impossible under the current system, Carter said.

“It’s like coming into the 20th Century,” Carter said. “When you call, you do get recording, you get a menu of choices. But, if at the end, you still need to talk to warm body, you can actually get a warm body.”

By the end of 1991, Pedersen said, an even bigger traffic court project ought to be up and running--a satellite office, designed to complement the Kearney Mesa site.

County planners will be selecting a 1,500-square-foot storefront site in Hillcrest, Pacific Beach, Mira Mesa or the College area. A ZIP code study showed that those four areas had the highest concentration of traffic offenders, Pedersen said.

The satellite office, modeled after a similar project in Los Angeles, will be staffed by three clerks but no judges, Pedersen said. Traffic offenders will be able to do “anything you can do on a traffic citation, short of having a judge hear it,” he said, meaning pay bail, sign up for traffic school or set a trial date.

When it opens, lines should be no more than “two- or three-minute waits, as opposed to the half hour or two hours that sometimes people encounter now,” at Kearny Mesa, Pedersen said.

Meanwhile, a revised version of those new traffic forms, already being worked up, will encourage suspected speeders or red-light zippers to take care of business at the satellite office by phone, Pedersen said.

“It’s the same theme,” he said. “Why go there if you don’t have to? Really, who wants to go to court? We understand that. “