O.C. Judges: More Money or No Courts

Setting up a possible showdown between local judges and Orange County supervisors, the state Judicial Council ruled Thursday that the county should pay up to $18.9 million more to keep its trial courts running through June.

The unanimous decision by the panel of legal professionals that handles administrative matters for California’s courts came after judges from Orange County argued that courthouses are now only weeks away from shutting down.

“We’ll close in early May” if the additional money isn’t made available, said Theodore E. Millard, presiding judge for the Orange County Superior Court.

But county officials said the courts are already adequately funded and that allocating more money to them would necessitate cuts elsewhere in an already anemic budget drained by the 1994 bankruptcy.

“We’re willing to give the courts what they need, but we’re not going to just open up the county checkbook,” Tom Agan, assistant county counsel, said during the hearing.

The council’s decision leaves the next move up to the Board of Supervisors, which meets Tuesday and is expected to decide whether to seek a truce or fight a legal battle with the judges.

A similar tussle last year was resolved only after Gov. Pete Wilson signed an emergency measure that provided the additional money Orange County needed to keep the courts in operation.

Agan and other county officials say the courts have been given the same funding as last year. If the courts continue at their current level of spending, they should be well within budget and experience no funding crisis, he predicted.

County officials also have suggested the courts shouldn’t expect any windfall in these post-bankruptcy days. While the county will remain saddled for the next two decades paying off its bankruptcy debts, the courts are sounding like “they want to go back to pre-bankruptcy levels of funding,” Agan said.

Court administrators paint a starkly different scenario, of a court system that did its share to tighten its belt during the bleak days of the bankruptcy and now needs help. Without proper funding, judges predict, court proceedings would come to a virtual halt, with some criminal cases going unheard and defendants losing their constitutional right to a speedy trial.

“We don’t believe in intergovernmental warfare,” said Alan Slater, executive officer of the Orange County courts. “But we have a very important job to do to meet the needs of the public.”

Because tougher sentences under the three-strikes law have made plea bargains less attractive, more defendants are willing take their chances at jury trials. And with bolstered funding for police and prosecutors, more criminal suspects are being netted, the criminal docket is being flooded, and the courts are straining to keep up.

Slater said many county agencies, among them the district attorney’s office and Sheriff’s Department, have seen double-digit budget increases, while court funding has remained stagnant.

In addition, Orange County courts have extra staffing costs. Workers were hired to fill some of the 80 vacant positions. The courts were also required under the county’s bankruptcy recovery plan to give retroactive pay raises to many workers.

The roots of the funding crisis date back to the early 1990s, when lawmakers in Sacramento sliced funding for the courts throughout California to help balance the state budget. The state now provides only about a third of Orange County’s court operations budget. The courts turned to the county for help, but that share was reduced after the bankruptcy.