Supervisors OK 51 Jobs to Unclog O.C. Courts : Justice: Key to plan is rehiring of retired judges. With 3,000-case backlog, average wait for civil trial is 3 1/2 years.

Despite mounting fiscal problems, the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a plan to add 51 new positions to the court system to help meet a daunting backlog of cases.

The focal point of the plan is the rehiring of retired judges to help provide relief for the overburdened courts, officials said.

With a huge surge in gang, drug and other pressing criminal cases dominating court calendars, civil cases are now averaging a 3 1/2-year delay before trial in Orange County Superior Court. There are nearly 3,000 criminal and civil cases awaiting trial--more than twice the number as at the same date last year, court officials said.

“Right now, we’re not doing our job,” Superior Court Administrator Alan Slater said Tuesday. “We’re not performing our duties under the Constitution satisfactorily.”

The court-funding plan approved Tuesday is aimed at breaking the logjam.

Reached after arduous negotiations in recent weeks between county budget makers and court officials, the plan will cost the county an extra $3 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The rise in the county’s share of the costs is blamed in part on a $1.1-million drop in state funding from last year’s levels.

“We obviously didn’t get everything we wanted,” said Donald E. Smallwood, presiding judge of the Superior Court, “but given all the problems the county has and the state has with budgets, we did well and we’re satisfied.”

Court and county officials say that the agreement reflects the urgency of pumping new money into the beleaguered judicial system, even as other sectors of county government face bare-bones budgets.

Just two weeks ago, the Board of Supervisors eliminated 709 now-vacant positions and froze 695 others in the face of a budget shortfall next year that could top $65 million. And department heads are bracing for frozen operating budgets, if not wholesale cutbacks.

County officials call it the worst fiscal crisis in memory.

The county’s more generous attitude toward the courts was not altogether voluntary, however.

Unlike their dealings with other parts of county government, county officials are mandated by the state to negotiate with representatives of all facets of the courts to reach agreeable budget levels.

Had the county had direct autonomy in setting funding levels for the courts, Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton conceded, “we probably would have been a lot more conservative. . . . But we did the best we could.”

The plan provides for a total operating budget for local courts of $116.2 million. The state is to provide $48.8 million and the county $31.3 million, with the remainder coming from court-collected fees and fines.

The outlying municipal courts reached agreements with the county last week on spending levels, with Municipal Court in Fullerton profiting most through increased funding because county officials found it had been most understaffed.

But Superior Court officials held out until Monday to reach agreement with county budget makers--just a day before the supervisors’ vote. The dispute centered on the number of retired judge positions that would be funded.

Superior Court officials--backed by the state--wanted 11 positions; the county initially was offering four. In the end, the two sides agreed on eight judge positions and support staff, phased over two years.

The agreement will cost the county $539,000 next fiscal year, officials said.

Retired judges are already called on sporadically to hear cases at the request of the court, but the new program included in Tuesday’s plan will for the first time provide set funding for the returning judges, along with marshals, clerks and other support staff to aid them.

Slater said there are about 25 to 30 retired judges who have expressed an interest in hearing cases on a part-time basis, and many of them likely will be used on a staggered schedule to make up eight full-time positions.

The judges are to be paid about $397 a day, without benefits.

Retired Superior Court Judge James K. Turner, who has already been hearing cases off and on over the past year, praised the county’s move during a recess in a trial he was hearing in Santa Ana.

“I have no desire to come back and work full time, but I’d like to keep my hand in it and keep up on the law--so this is a perfect setup,” he said.

County officials hope that the retired judges program--combined with an expedited trial program started several years ago to condense and speed the judicial process--could cut the average trial wait to under two years.

Slater said the numbers on trial delays and case filings tend to “depersonalize” the court, obscuring the fact that litigants may wait years to collect on unpaid medical bills or find out the fate of their livelihoods.

“Those are very real issues, “ he said, “and that’s easy to forget.”

Justice Delayed

It can now take as long as five years to bring a civil suit to trial in Orange County Superior Court. Too few judges and too many cases are to blame, court officials say. Case filings in the past five years:

Year Criminal Civil Family Law 1987 4,363 37,869 13,991 1988 5,236 36,651 13,900 1989 5,823 37,454 12,530 1990 6,566 38,446 13,193 1991 7,207 * 34,291 12,878

* Court officials believe that state changes in trial regulations led some lawyers to delay the filing of civil suits in 1990, causing the drop-off.

Source: Orange County Superior Court administrator’s office