Facts on court backlogs, authorization for extra Judges and problems in California Courts that affect you, the public

Rather than my summarizing these documents, read these links for yourself and all the information. These are systemic issues that I have pointed out on my blog. Worsened during the leadership of former Humboldt County Superior Court CEO Kerri Keenan.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/jc-20150626-adoc.pdf

This is a long document from June 25-26, 2015 and gives insight into many issues in the criminal justice system in California,  on page 24, it says 1 Judge approved for Humboldt. Funding has not yet been provided.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/partners/documents/County_Budget_Snapshot_Humboldt_2015.pdf

This is from February 2015.

Highlights from the above link:

Staff Impacts / Furloughs / Layoffs / Unfilled Vacancies  Humboldt Court has an 8% vacancy rate.  We eliminated 36% of mid level management and management positions since 2009.  In 2010 we did not fill the management position over Family Law/Juvenile and assigned the function to the manager responsible for Civil/Appeals.  We have not provided cost of living adjustments since FY 2008- 09.  Pay equity gaps between the classifications are making it difficult to recruit and retain employees.


Counters / Clerks / Telephones  Counters and telephones close every day at 2pm instead of 4pm due to our inability to unfreeze positions.  The Court was understaffed prior to freezing positions. This has resulted in operational backlogs which directly impacts the public.

 Availability of Judicial Officers Humboldt should have two additional judges: one in civil and one in family law and juvenile. Lack of adequate judicial resources results in delays, and a cumbersome calendar management system to ensure mandatory matters are heard within statutory timeframes.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/jc-20140220-adoc.pdf
This is from 2014. See page 17 in particular.

I contacted Humboldt County Superior Court Interim CEO Mike Tozzi about to clarify if two additional judges were funded from Humboldt, which I heard from more than one source. And whether funding was the issue.

Mr. Tozzi's response to me via email on August 24: " I'm not aware of the bill that authorizes judges. I know that money has to be appropriated by the legislature before authorized judges can be appointed. There are other variables, e.g., facilities, etc., which come to play in the process.It's usually not an issue an interim gets involved with unless the process is in the 11th hour phase."

He asked me to research the status of the bills. SB 299 and other bills have been around for a while, it's not recent information.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_229_cfa_20150602_215845_sen_floor.html

This is a link to SB 229, it includes prior bills mentioned in the links above.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/18838.htm

According to this link, SB 299 was passed in September 2015. Senate Bill 229, which would allocate $5 million to fund a dozen trial court judge positions statewide, passed both legislative houses unanimously this week, the first judge-funding bill to pass since 2007, just before the budget crisis began. 

So will things change to address the backlog in the courts system and will Humboldt get any funding?