Blog note: this article references a recent grand jury report on the topic.
SAN JOSE — Five years after insisting that a new $225 million courthouse wouldn’t break the bank, Santa Clara County court officials are slashing already depleted public services to help pay for the Family Justice Center with gleaming Grecian columns clad in ornamental stone imported from Italy.
While residents will endure even longer waits at the counter to process legal paperwork and for judgments to be entered into the computer system — among other inconveniences — the court blames its financial plight on factors it could not have foreseen. Those include plummeting revenue from late fines on traffic tickets, the seizure of the court’s savings by the state, and the drastic revision of Santa Clara County’s funding formula to help needier counties.
Yet the county’s judges made a calculated decision in 2012 under the leadership of a different chief executive and presiding judge to proceed with the courthouse after the state Legislature, citing the continuing fiscal crisis, cut the project.
The courthouse “is an absolute drain on the budget,” acknowledged new court CEO Rebecca Fleming, referring to the eight-story building near St. James Park that opened last August.
The state Judicial Council helped ease the financial burden last week by extending the mortgage six years to shave $1 million off the annual debt payments. The council oversees the lease-revenue bond that financed the courthouse and is also paying more than half of the project’s total cost.
But the financial strain on Santa Clara County Superior Court — initially created by drastic cutbacks in state funding and exacerbated by the decision during the economic downturn to build the new courthouse — will continue to take a significant toll on services. The court still will be doling out $4 million a year for the building for the next 26 years, plus nearly a million in the 27th year. It is the single largest expense in the court budget (accounting for 4 percent) after personnel (77 percent).
“The courthouse may someday be featured in Architectural Digest, but right now it’s proving to be a financial albatross around the necks of court workers and the public we serve,’’ said court clerk Ingrid Stewart, president of the Superior Court Professional Employees Association, which staged a strike for higher wages last year just before the court opened. “We strongly encourage the judges and the new court administrator to work with us to make court operations more efficient.”
The courthouse replaced six overcrowded, unsafe, rundown buildings the administration was leasing for about $570,000 a year, and it benefits thousands of families by consolidating the juvenile, drug dependency, mental health and other courts in one convenient location.
Court officials at the time said they expected the new building to last a century or more — far longer than the debt payments — saving taxpayers millions over its lifetime.
To stay out of the red, the court has already slashed its staff by a third since 2008, cut hours at public counters, and closed traffic courts in Palo Alto and Morgan Hill, forcing South County residents who can’t afford to front the money for fines to drive 42 miles north to sign a promise to appear.
But that hasn’t been nearly enough to prevent a series of sizable backlogs that keep reappearing — like the Whac-A-Mole arcade game — with significant consequences for the public.
Earlier this year, as many as 12,000 traffic tickets hadn’t been entered into the court’s computer system, causing indefinite delays for motorists who couldn’t resolve their tickets. Now, the court is eight weeks behind on processing civil judgments, among other paperwork logjams, creating problems for people who want to collect their awards or file an appeal.
The court has also significantly shortened hours at its public counters. And the bench is so short on court reporters, it has decided to save money by eliminating them in all probate cases and most civil proceedings, forcing those who need a record of their hearings to hire a private stenographer at about $1,000 a day, plus $5.15 per page.
Presiding Judge Patricia M. Lucas, who has been the court’s policymaker since January, said the court is doing everything it can to stay in the black and provide the best service possible.
The new courthouse’s costs are the latest hit to a local court system already under fire. The county civil grand jury last month noted that the system, despite being flush with judges, takes longer to resolve criminal cases than any of the state’s other 57 trial courts, and blamed a “culture of complacency.”
The grand jury was not permitted to investigate the operations of Santa Clara County Superior Court, which convenes it. But others say the judges have the most power in the system and should grant far fewer continuances, forcing other agencies like the district attorney, public defender and police to be more efficient.
“A properly run court system dispenses justice in a timely manner,’’ said Dallas Sacher, executive director of the Sixth District Appellate Program. “One can only hope that the court will devote as much energy to delivering timely justice as it does to servicing the debt on its new courthouse.”
But Lucas said the court is proud of its system because it affords judges the time in court to allow people to be heard.
“We see a dichotomy between efficiency and fairness,” Lucas said. “The most efficient court is probably not the one we want because we want to be fair.”
In an anonymous complaint to the State Auditor, court observers noted that the bench could save about $700,000 a year in salaries and benefits by having existing judges rather than three commissioners preside over traffic and small claims cases. When the state Legislature gutted court funding during the economic downturn, San Francisco Superior Court fired nine of its 10 commissioners and has hired only one back since, a spokeswoman there said.
Any savings on commissioners would not come near to covering the debt, but the court could use the money to hire six to eight more clerks, depending on their level of experience.
The court currently has no plans to eliminate any commissioners. Lucas and Assistant Presiding Judge Deborah A. Ryan said judges are all too busy to take over those duties, signing arrest warrants, reviewing requests for restraining orders and other tasks, even when their courtrooms are closed.
July 2, 2017
The Mercury News
By Tracey Kaplan
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