State Senate Approves Funds to Keep Local Trial Courts Open

The state Senate voted Friday to appropriate $290.5 million to keep local trial courts open through the rest of the 1996-97 fiscal year.

A 29-0 Senate vote sent the measure to the Assembly, where quick approval is expected next week.

“This is the responsible thing to do,” said Sen. Ross Johnson of Irvine, the only Republican to speak in the brief debate on the bill by Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward).

The appropriation would avert a looming crisis in which trial courts were expected to run out of money later this month or in March in most of California’s 58 counties.

That crisis was caused by an impasse last summer between Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Lockyer over the Senate leader’s attempts to add a provision to the court finance bill that would have restored collective bargaining rights for court employees.

Wilson refused to accept that amendment, and Lockyer refused to send a bill appropriating the state’s share of local court costs to Wilson without the collective bargaining provisions.

“I’ve given up on that fight. I have acceded to the governor’s view on that, at least in the short term,” Lockyer said Friday. “Keeping courts open is more important . . . and this keeps the doors open.”

But that battle is not over, Lockyer added, promising to pursue the collective bargaining issue again in negotiations over the 1997-98 state budget.

“There’s been a reframing of the issue,” Lockyer said, referring to his proposal to link court funding to the even more contentious issue of welfare reform.

But Lockyer said it makes sense administratively to merge General Assistance, now a $355-million annual county expense, with the new welfare system the state is designing to replace Aid to Families With Dependent Children, and for counties to take full responsibility for trial courts.