Picket Lines Add to O.C. Court Woes

Orange County courts suffer from bloated management, poor morale and a rift between judges and managers that lingers five years after the state ordered municipal and superior courts to consolidate, according to a review by the National Center for State Courts in Denver.

The draft review surfaced Tuesday as 250 employees protested in front of the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana that they had not received 4% pay raises that had been promised. Other picketing occurred at court complexes in Fullerton, Newport Beach, Orange and Westminster.

It was the first time in memory that court employees have taken to the streets, said Nick Berardino, assistant general manager of the Orange County Employees Assn., which represents 1,200 court employees.

About 700 employees have signed a no-confidence petition, he said, accusing Presiding Judge Frederick P. Horn and court Executive Officer Alan Slater of creating a hostile work atmosphere and demoralizing staff.

“The courts are inefficient and ineffective,” Berardino said. “They’re wasting taxpayer money and spending it with both hands. It’s a complete mess.”

Horn deferred comment to Slater, who blamed the courts’ problems on the state budget crisis. The courts are funded by the state and although employees received pay raises over the last two years, raises promised in the final year of their three-year contract have not been funded because there is only enough money to cover current salary levels, he said.

Last month, the court asked the employees association to postpone the final raise and then renegotiate it after a budget is signed by Gov. Gray Davis.

“We don’t blame the employees,” Slater said. “They were in line for a raise, we negotiated in good faith and if we had the money, we’d be paying them in good faith.”

But there are other problems in California’s second-largest court system, the nonprofit consulting organization found. The outside review was commissioned by the court to find ways to improve its management.

While the review found the courts to be “well functioning and basically sound,” service to the public and judges has deteriorated in the last five years as officials have struggled -- generally unsuccessfully -- to accommodate the courts consolidation and moving from county to state control.

“The court has not taken advantage of the efficiencies that can arise from unification and has, if anything, become more inefficient by simply merging personnel of formerly separate courts,” the review said. “Very little in the way of consolidation has occurred.”

The merger created further hostility, the review found, because employees were designated as managers in the new system even though they had little or no management responsibilities. Staff reductions that should have occurred didn’t, it said.

That left Orange County’s court system with 13 executives and more than 80 managers -- compared with nine executives and 41 managers in San Diego County’s system. Orange County should reduce its executives by two, and cut its management staff in half, the review recommended.

Slater said the criticisms were not unexpected. The problem of too many managers, he said, was a holdover from the county’s system for classifying certain salaried employees as managers despite their job duties. “We hadn’t gotten around to moving toward a [different] model,” he said.

Among the review’s findings:

* Management decisions were based on inadequate information. This criticism came from judges who said staff didn’t provide them with complete and accurate information, from managers who complained that judges sometimes made rash policy decisions, and from lower-level staff who thought that upper management was too timid or uninformed to point out problems to members of judicial committees.

* The more assertive involvement by judges in court administration riled some staff, which interpreted the action as intrusive and reflecting a lack of trust. Judges said they were attempting to become familiar with new responsibilities, which was viewed by some employees as micromanaging. There also was a widespread view that Horn’s abrasive style as presiding judge contributed to problems.

* The installation of a computer system to track traffic and misdemeanor violations was done with inadequate preparation and has been disruptive. Problems with software were much greater than expected and hadn’t been fixed as of June, six months after installation.

* Complaints that “no one listens or asks” run from lower-level employees to judges. There is a perception that failure to communicate properly led to faulty management decisions and weakened morale. “There is a feeling that messengers of bad news are unwelcome, so the recourse is silence,” according to the review.