Courts Weigh Cuts in Response to Budget Gap

As state court officials consider how to cut costs to comply with the governor’s proposed budget, they are betting on a few controversial policy changes that could produce an estimated $100 million a year in savings and new revenue.

Gov. Gray Davis has proposed giving courts greater flexibility to tape-record proceedings rather than rely on court reporters to provide official transcripts, and to seek competitive bids from local law enforcement for courthouse security.

Both proposals are expected to draw strong opposition in Sacramento, where lobbyists for court reporters have beaten back challenges to their legislatively mandated monopoly for decades and county sheriffs and their police officer associations wield great influence.

Davis recommended shifting an estimated $31 million in various court fees from county coffers to the state judicial branch, a move opposed by counties.

If legislators don’t approve the proposals, the court system will be forced to cut its budget by more than the nearly 10% currently being sought, court officials said.

California Chief Justice Ronald M. George said he expects opposition, but believes that the proposals made in the governor’s budget represent “good policy.”

He said the judiciary must fulfill many mandates -- from paying lawyers to represent poor defendants in death penalty cases to providing courtroom interpreters -- that limit its discretionary budget to about 26% of the $2.5 billion spent annually on the court system.

Without these policy changes, “we would be very hard-pressed to provide our services to the public and perform our core functions,” George said.

“I do expect opposition, but what we want to do is negotiate with the court reporters and sheriffs,” he said. “We don’t want this to be confrontational.”

Court officials have locked horns with court reporters many times over the last two decades -- and lost every time.

The current proposal would save an estimated $31 million in court reporter salaries and benefits by replacing them with electronic recording devices in some courtrooms. The court would save an additional $5.5 million in transcript costs.

Last year, the court system spent $151 million to pay court reporter salaries and benefits plus an additional $25 million to buy the transcripts they prepare, said Presiding Justice James A. Ardaiz of Fresno, chairman of the Judicial Council’s Reporting of the Record Task Force.

Court reporters in Los Angeles are paid up to $78,000 a year and can earn thousands more by selling transcripts. They charge $2.34 a page for the original transcript and 41 cents a page for copies.

Each time a criminal defendant files an appeal, the court system must buy one transcript for the appellate court and at least two more for the prosecutor and defense attorney. It’s not unusual for a transcript to run 20,000 to 30,000 pages.

The state Supreme Court is currently reviewing a transcript of more than 100,000 pages, George said, and could get a case with as many as 500,000 pages.

But Robin Sunkees, president-elect of the California Court Reporters Assn., said the proposal simply “takes money out of one budget category and puts it in another.”

Sunkees said the court would still have to provide transcripts, and without court reporters, the burden would shift to another group of court employees.

Her association “strongly opposes electronic recording in any courtroom,” Sunkees said, because it is inadequate. There have been cases, she said, in which someone forgets to turn on the recording device before a proceeding, or when someone in the courtroom coughs and the proceedings are inaudible.

The court reporters association sued the Judicial Council in 1994 to stop the use of electronic monitoring devices in California courtrooms, and won.

A judge ruled that state law prohibited the Judicial Council from experimenting with recording technology under current law, which makes court reporters the sole source of official transcripts.

Most states use a mix of court reporters and recording devices, Ardaiz said. Kentucky uses only electronic recording.

Sunkees also defended the court reporter’s right to own the transcript. She said reporters typically spend two to three hours preparing an hour of testimony, and also pay for their own training, computers and supplies.

“We get paid for our transcripts in lieu of overtime,” she said.

Another proposed change would give courts more flexibility by seeking competitive bids for courthouse security, a line item in the court’s budget that has risen from $200 million to $300 million over the past few years.

Local sheriffs now have a lock on providing security, giving court officials little ability to negotiate overtime and other costs, court officials said.

The governor’s proposal would allow local law enforcement agencies and the California Highway Patrol to bid for service contracts. A 1998 state law gives sheriffs the exclusive right to provide courthouse security.

Legislative Director Nick Warner said the California State Sheriffs’ Assn. opposes efforts that might remove deputies from courtrooms. “We are very much opposed to courts contracting out, especially with private security,” he said.

“It does not make sense programmatically,” Warner said, to have deputies bring in-custody defendants into the courthouse and pass them off to another agency, which would provide bailiff and lockup security. “They need to flow.”

Meanwhile, the California State Assn. of Counties “adamantly opposes” efforts to transfer an estimated $31 million in undesignated court fees to the judiciary. Besides these changes, the governor’s budget also proposes a $20 security fee on each new lawsuit filed and an increase in motion fees in civil cases from $23 to $33.

George said Davis and the Legislature have the constitutional authority to determine the budget, whether by policy changes or deeper cuts in discretionary spending.

The judiciary cannot determine its own fate on these issues. “Whether there will be the political will to carry them into being is up to the other two branches of government,” George said.