State Council Rejects Courts’ Plea for Funds

The state Judicial Council denied Orange County’s request Friday for $26.8 million needed to keep the county’s courts from running out of money and shutting down for three months this spring.

County and court officials said they would join forces to ask the Legislature for money to avoid a legal showdown in which the bankrupt county would be forced to provide extra funding under a court order.

“We’re optimistic that with a little state help, we’ll be able to keep it going and keep the courts up through the rest of the fiscal year,” Presiding Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard said Friday.

Seeking emergency assistance from the Judicial Council was the second step in the legal process the judges must follow before actually ordering the county to fill the budget hole at the expense of other county programs and services.

In December, the court took the first step, giving legal notice to the county of the budget deficiency. Former Presiding Judge James L. Smith warned at the time: “This is not a game of chicken.”

County Chief Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier and Ron Coley, a member of her staff working on the issue, did not return calls for comment on Friday’s development.

The lack of funding “has become a critical emergency,” the county and judges have written in a three-page plea to Gov. Pete Wilson and members of the Orange County legislative delegation. The appeal has been signed by the five county supervisors, Millard and the five presiding municipal court judges.

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In the letter, expected to be sent after next Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Supervisors, the officials contend the funding problem is due primarily to the “evaporation” of state funding for courts, which has shrunk by nearly 57% since 1991.

As the state reduced its contributions to trial court funding to help balance the state budget, counties have been obliged to take up the slack. The state now provides less than 35% of Orange County’s $140-million court operating budget, the letter points out.

An aide to Assemblyman Richard Ackerman (R-Fullerton) said he planned to introduce a bill late Friday requesting special funding of more than $51 million to help keep courts in Los Angeles and Orange counties in operation through June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Los Angeles courts are short $26.2 million, the aide said.

The assemblyman said that he’s convinced the courts have done the best they can to handle rising caseloads with fewer resources, and that money diverted from the courts in the past has been used to balance other parts of the state budget.

“They can’t depend on the counties to do it” anymore, Ackerman said. “The monies the courts make should be used to help finance their operations.”

Orange County asked the Judicial Council’s Trial Court Budget Commission for $31.7 million in January, then reduced the request to $26.8 million after the county said it could provide an additional $5 million.

Now, the county and courts say, $25.2 million is needed to avert a shutdown or the threatened legal showdown. To save money, the courts already have delayed security and computer improvements and have not filled vacant positions.

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Reeling from state cutbacks and reductions in county funding caused by the bankruptcy, the courts have warned they would run out of money by April 15 and would have to close until the new fiscal year begins in July.

Various dire predictions have been made since the budget problem surfaced last year, ranging from the courts having to free thousands of criminal defendants to the shutdown of civil proceedings.

But Millard said the Superior Court is not considering closing civil courtrooms, a move that would actually cost the courts money since civil litigants pay for their proceedings.

The Judicial Council said it would have to take money from another county to provide emergency funds to Orange County, a move it rejected because that would “severely affect the operation to such courts.”