Order in the Courts

by Claire Cooper

When Ronald M. George was a Los Angeles trial judge in the mid-1980s, he would occasionally preside over a law and motion calendar. The department's senior research attorney at the time, Martha M. Escutia, remembers his engaging personality. "For a judge to be that friendly was something new to us," says Escutia, a former Democratic state assemblywoman and state senator from Los Angeles.

A decade later, when George became California's 27th chief justice, that kind of goodwill paid off. George soon developed a vision for a robustly independent judicial branch, and he was tireless in pushing an agenda to achieve it. To a remarkable extent his vision has become reality, thanks to scores of people—Escutia among them—who responded to his combination of personality and persistence.

When the state assumed responsibility for the formerly county-funded trial courts in 1997, Escutia carried the bill as chairwoman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee. Five years later, when the Legislature authorized the state to take over trial court facilities as well, she carried that bill as chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

To credit George exclusively for the reforms instituted during his 14 years as chief justice would be unfair: He carried on the work of former Chief Justices Phil S. Gibson, Rose Bird, and Malcolm Lucas. That he was in charge during the payoff made all the difference, though. Neither of his immediate predecessors, Bird or Lucas, had been popular in Sacramento. But George was respected, both as a judge and as an administrator.

"It's hard to overestimate the influence of the person of the chief," says Lloyd Connelly, a Sacramento Superior Court judge and former Democratic assemblyman. George, he says, "was well-respected by [then—Assembly Speaker] Willie Brown at the same time he was respected by Pete Wilson"—the governor who appointed George to the state Supreme Court, later elevated him to chief justice, and signed into law his most important administrative initiatives.

It also mattered that George simply wasn't Malcolm Lucas, who as chief became persona non grata in the state Capitol Building from the moment he upheld legislative term limits in 1991. In a biting opinion, Lucas referred to a compelling need to protect the state "against an entrenched, dynastic legislative bureaucracy." (Legislature v. Eu, 54 Cal. 3d 492, 520 (1991).) Never again was he invited to deliver what had been an annual state-of-the-judiciary address before a joint legislative session.

George had signed that term-limits opinion as an associate justice, but the lawmakers didn't seem to notice. On May 15, 1996—just two weeks after he took the oath as chief—George addressed a joint legislative session on the state of the judiciary.

While Lucas had seemed aloof and intimidating, George was accessible and direct. Almost immediately he set out to visit the courts of all 58 counties to hear firsthand about the concerns of the bench, bar, and legal community. He assigned himself to Los Angeles's children's court to participate in Adoption Saturday. Invited to preside at one of the adoptions, he enjoyed it so much that he performed about ten more—plus a mock adoption for one boy's dog.

Occasionally, when his presence at the Capitol was likely to alter the political dynamics of a stalled courts bill, he would pop over on short notice for a face-to-face talk with a lawmaker or the governor. And at the start of each legislative session, George and his top staff would sit down for two days of individual meetings with the leadership and with the chairs and vice-chairs of the judiciary and budget committees.

"People really cared that he would take the time to do that," says Ray LeBov, the state Judicial Council's director of governmental affairs during George's first eight years as chief justice. "Some would actually say what an honor it was to have him in the office talking to them in that way."

Nathan Barankin, then legislative director for Bill Lockyer, the Senate's president pro tem at the time, says that George "saw the Legislature as a partner for achieving his objectives for the courts. The results are ... he got things done."

Of course, none of the process was simple. Transforming the funding and administration of the California courts involved massive shifts of money, property, and power. As George pushed for centralization and coordination, others pulled to preserve local autonomy. Among the chief's fiercest adversaries were his former colleagues on the Los Angeles Superior Court, who had political clout both in their county and in Sacramento.

Second District Court of Appeal Justice Arthur Gilbert recalls that everyone expected that George would be sympathetic to his home court when he became chief justice. But George had other plans. "I'm the chief for all the judges," the new chief said.

More than 14 years later, although some significant opposition to his agenda remains, George's legacy is evident throughout California—from the powerful Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) in San Francisco to the Long Beach Court Building that will be constructed using innovative public-private financing.

George says his administrative initiatives were driven by the desire to create "a true co-equal independent branch of government ... a structure for judges to do their jobs." But the reforms were motivated as much by necessity as by lofty ideals.

George's first major priority—state funding of the trial courts—was essential to free them in parts of California from reliance on unpredictable county revenues and county supervisors. In counties with scarce resources it might take five years or more to get a civil case to trial. There were years when some county courts would have shut down entirely had the Judicial Council—the state courts' governing body, appointed and chaired by the chief justice—not appealed to the Legislature for emergency appropriations.

Even so, winning passage of a trial-court funding bill was a multiyear effort. Once he became chief justice, George worked behind the scenes, meeting with legislators in person and conferring with them by phone, reassuring court and county leaders who feared the changes. He also sat down with representatives of the public employee unions.

Most superior court judges in Los Angeles were adamantly opposed to the switch to state funding, which would require them to compete with 57 other county court systems for appropriations. They preferred lobbying county supervisors for their annual budget rather than court administrators in San Francisco or lawmakers in Sacramento. Los Angeles supervisors, located just a short walk across the Civic Center Mall, had traditionally supported a strong court system. It also helped that in Los Angeles (as in some other counties), the supervisors' own salaries and benefits were indexed to the compensation they authorized for their judges.

In the end, the resisting judges were mollified by provisions written into the bill. One assured the local courts of continued administrative autonomy. Another expressed the Legislature's intent that "no personnel employed in the court system as of July 1, 1997, shall have their salary or benefits reduced as a result of this act."

The biggest issue for the unions was collective bargaining on noneconomic issues—they wanted the court-funding bill to guarantee it. Lockyer was on their side, but Governor Wilson wouldn't sign a bill with such a guarantee. William C. Vickrey, administrative director of the AOC, saw a way to break the impasse: Instead of inserting the bargaining provision into the bill, the Judicial Council would adopt it as a rule of court. Once the unions agreed to the plan, Lockyer went along.

"The chief took heat for doing this by rule, but you could probably give most credit to Vickrey for pushing that idea when the bill blew up," says one attorney involved in the negotiating process on behalf of the Judicial Council, who asked not to be named.

In October 1997, Wilson signed the Lockyer-Isenberg Trial Court Funding Act (Stats. 1997, ch. 850), named by the bill's author, Assembly Judiciary Committee chairwoman Escutia, for Lockyer and Democrat Phil Isenberg, a former Assembly Judiciary chairman and a longtime champion of statewide court reform. It gave the state full responsibility for funding trial court operations in a single, statewide trial court budget allocated by the Judicial Council.

George celebrated his victory in a speech delivered just hours after the bill became law. "Trial court funding has been the Judicial Council's first and foremost priority," he told the Conference of Delegates at the State Bar's annual meeting in San Diego. "With the bill's passage, the council can focus on those critical areas where funding is most urgently needed and make funding decisions in the best interests of the entire court system."

The second priority on George's agenda—unification of the superior and municipal courts—was almost as important, and nearly as hard to achieve.

The objective was to put more resources into the state's civil calendars. Studies had shown that significant savings could be achieved by making all trial judges available for all kinds of cases, merging staffs, and eliminating duplicate facilities. "You would see municipal court judges finished with their preliminary hearings, and they'd go home, and [superior court] colleagues up to their ears in cases facing dismissal," George recalls.

When George became chief, unification legislation had been stuck in the Legislature for four years. "When he came on board and actually embraced this, that was big," recalls Barankin, whose boss, Lockyer, had carried the bill.

The Legislature promptly approved unification in July 1996 as a proposed constitutional amendment, and state voters endorsed it in 1998 as Proposition 220. A key provision that assured legislative passage allowed the judges in each county to vote on whether to unify. As George remembers it, he and Lockyer agreed that a local option was the only politically feasible way to achieve court unification. "I always thought that once we had the vast majority [of counties], the holdouts would come along," George says.

Within a year after Prop. 220 passed, the judges of 53 counties had voted to merge their courts. Once again, the most significant holdout was Los Angeles County, where the superior court's resistance to unification was intense. As Isenberg recalls, the superior court judges there "hated" the idea of being "equated in any way, shape, or form with municipal court judges, since God intended that there be a superior court composed only of superior court judges." In the central Los Angeles courthouse, the judges even had separate dining facilities, George says. A municipal court judge could dine in the superior court dining room only at the invitation of a superior court judge.

The judges who opposed unification raised a host of objections. In July 1998 Superior Court Judge David Workman speculated in the Los Angeles Daily Journal that "harried trial judges at the Superior Court level will be hard-pressed to listen patiently to smaller disputes, given their large inventory of other matters."

That month the judges of the Los Angeles Superior Court voted against unification. According to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, George and the Judicial Council threatened various sanctions, including withholding funding for modernization and other programs.

At least one judge left for higher pay as a neutral rather than accept a merger. In a March 1999 interview with the Los Angeles Daily Journal, retiring Superior Court Judge Enrique Romero said he wasn't sure he wanted to be part of a court system that could end up with 500 to 600 judicial officers. "It's just too humongous," Romero said. "It's just too big, too huge to manage."

In April 1999 a committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court warned that if the courts unified, the county would likely face a lawsuit for violations of the federal Voting Rights Act because minority voters would be less able to elect judges representing their communities. Judges might even be held personally liable for damages and attorneys fees, the panel cautioned.

Superior Court Judge Robert H. O'Brien, a dissenting committee member, shot back a memo disparaging "feigned concerns about voting rights of minorities."

Superior Court Judge Michael Johnson returned the fire, saying O'Brien's memo was based on "wishful thinking." But Municipal Court Judge Philip K. Mautino circulated the memo to members of the Municipal Court Presiding Judges Association—who overwhelmingly supported unification—with a cover note reading, "We are not alone."

When the superior court judges voted against unification for a second time in June 1999, they ignited a firestorm. "L.A. Lawmakers Send a Distress Signal to Judges: They're Mad as Hell and Want Unification," a Los Angeles Daily Journal headline read. Legislators said they would give the superior court judges one more chance to unify, according to the story by Tom Dresslar. After that, additional judgeships for the county could be withheld, judicial pay raises could be denied, or all new judgeships in Los Angeles could be designated for the municipal court. One lawmaker reportedly considered introducing a bill to convert all Los Angeles Superior Court judges to municipal court judges.

The article quoted state Senator Escutia: "As soon as next year starts and [the Los Angeles judges] haven't gotten their act together, I will engage." People were trying to read the political tea leaves, she recalls, "and it took them a while."

Lockyer, who was by then the state attorney general, offered his reassurance: In a letter to Los Angeles County Superior Court Presiding Judge Victor A. Chavez, he stated that in the unlikely event of a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act, he would represent the court or individual judges if requested by the Judicial Council to do so.

The superior court judges voted again in January 2000, this time agreeing by a margin of more than 2-to-1 to merge with the municipal court. (The county's muni court judges had approved the merger in all three rounds of balloting.)

Some of the original critics still have misgivings about the change. "In retrospect, I think that I and others were right," says retired Judge Romero, now a neutral for ADR Services in Century City. "Los Angeles has probably 25 to 30 percent of all judges in the state of California. It is an administrative nightmare to run such a huge bureaucracy."

But Judge Workman says his fears about wasting time on municipal court–level matters turned out to be unfounded. He says he enjoyed hearing some of the smaller cases, and his former colleagues on the superior court also handled them well. "I think ultimately there was a better use of judges' time," he says.

The last of George's major structural reforms—transferring county court facilities to state ownership and responsibility—got under way with the passage of authorizing legislation by state Senator Escutia: the Trial Court Facilities Act of 2002. (Stats. 2002, ch. 1082 (S.B. 1732).)

But the transfer process wasn't easy, involving intricate negotiations with each county. The counties had their separate concerns and one common one: They worried that the state would take over their best properties and saddle them with responsibility for the problem sites, says Rubin Lopez, who represented the California State Association of Counties in the negotiations.

Once in a while George stepped into the talks personally. He was a reasonable negotiator, Lopez says, "but he didn't give away the store." The chief's very presence would alter the chemistry, Lopez recalls. "It helps when you meet with the chief justice and he looks you in the face and says, 'We understand there are some good things for you and there are some tough things for you, but my objective is that the facilities transfers to the state will take place according to the letter of the law.' "

Eventually more than 500 court facilities came under management by the state. About one-third of the most crowded, least safe, and least accessible buildings were designated for replacement, expansion, or renovation. Many of those projects have been completed or are under way, thanks in large part to a $5 billion revenue bond measure enacted in 2008.

Under George's leadership many more resources were allocated to the courts: More than 100 new judgeships were added in the past decade, judicial pay increased almost 46 percent—to $178,789—and annual spending on trial court operations climbed to more than $3 billion.

"There was not a desire for centralization for centralization's sake or for a power grab," says LeBov, the Judicial Council's former liaison to Sacramento. "To the extent that the model favored some increase in centralized management, it was for the purpose of bringing greater functionality to the system."

With state ownership and control of the California trial courts, the Judicial Council's AOC has grown in size and power. As George sees things, the growth of that central infrastructure merely reflects the AOC's additional responsibilities.

"The AOC is obligated to do so much more now than in the past," says agency spokesman Philip Carrizosa. To perform its new functions, the office has had to hire new types of professionals: architects, real estate attorneys, finance specialists, labor lawyers, and computer wonks.

It has launched sophisticated data systems to manage cases, finances, and personnel, as well as programs tailored for many special types of litigants—from foster children to the business community.

Still, the numbers are startling. In 1998 the AOC's budget was about $77 million; last year it was $138.9 million—or if you include the court facilities budget, $320 million.

The AOC's staffing has increased from 268 full-time employees in 1998 to 878 as of last March, and about a quarter of those workers are paid $100,000 a year or more. They include bureaucrats—directors, managers, and supervisors—as well as professionals with special skills—attorneys, consultants, and computer development analysts.

The number of public employees at the AOC earning six figures may seem outsized, but Carrizosa says the percentage is lower than at some other state agencies with lawyers and other professionals on staff. At the courts of appeal, for example, he says 46 percent of employees earn more than $100,000; the figure is 38 percent at the California Highway Patrol and 27 percent at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

AOC spending accounts for just 3.9 percent of the judicial branch budget, Carrizosa says; another 7 percent is devoted to AOC facilities maintenance, renovation, and construction programs. The biggest part of the branch budget — 90.6 percent— pays for the trial courts. The entire branch budget is 5.2 percent of the total state budget.

But there's no question that court administration in California became a growth industry under George. Critics, and even some admirers, raised concerns all along.

Larry Stirling—a former Republican assemblyman, state senator, and trial judge from San Diego—says court unification has been used as an excuse to create "a huge, metastasized bureaucracy," thereby nullifying any savings that may be achieved through efficiency.

The criticism has settled less on George than on the AOC, Vickrey—its $217,574-a-year administrative director—and the Judicial Council, to which the AOC answers.

"The chief has done a most impressive job as an administrator and a judge," says Steve White, presiding judge of the Sacramento Superior Court. "But this is not to suggest that the result has been entirely positive. My concern is with the appetite and ambition of the AOC to manage and superintend the courts—as if the judiciary is a subset of the AOC rather than the other way around."

White speaks of a "huge gravity that pulls things in" at the AOC, and "a huge staff that is constantly tweaking and launching initiatives, and fine-tuning and quietly expanding its authority."

Critics and supporters alike speculate that Vickrey, more than George, was setting the administrative agenda, but nobody seems to know. "I think it could go either way," says one former high-ranking AOC employee who declined to be named. "Bill is the energizing force, and Bill is the visionary. He was brought in by [former Chief Justice] Malcolm Lucas because he was a visionary, and George bought into it ... because it was time to bring the courts into the 20th century," the source continued. "The fundamental question is, how much of what Bill was doing was the chief aware of, and how much didn't he want to know? ... Bill has an agenda."

Whether that agenda involved persuading or manipulating George—or whether Vickrey simply knew he had George's support—can only be guessed at, this source says.

Vickrey, a former Utah state court administrator and former executive director of Utah's Department of Corrections, has kept a low public profile. But a former judge and member of the governing committee of California's Center for Judicial Education and Research (CJER) describes how the AOC leader extended his influence. Soon after George became chief justice, the former board member recounts, "the Judicial Council approved a rewriting of its committee mandates in a way that gave the council full control of continuing judicial education—previously a joint responsibility of the council and the California Judges Association. When someone from the CJER board noticed this, Vickrey said he never intended that result. However, when CJER suggested removing the [problematic] language, Vickrey defended it, saying the Judicial Council had to have the control because the state funded the program."

The source, who asked not to be identified, continues: "The chief's position was, 'We didn't intend to pull the wool over your eyes. But now that it's happened, it's not a bad result.' Was that Vickrey's plan? He denied it, but it's happened."

Did Vickrey mishandle the AOC, though?

The former CJER board member gives the AOC director his due: "The guy's good. Good staff, good manner, and the statewide control of the judiciary has happened under him, and he's done a decent job of it."

Vickrey says he and George "enjoyed a close personal relationship that [was] truly a partnership," consulting almost daily on the big picture and often on the details as well.

But he says he "would not be operating independently of the chief justice or the council. ... While I have a point of view on issues, I am not the one that sets policy." The AOC's Carrizosa also disputes the former CJER board member's account.

George's allegiance to Vickrey is unwavering. "I don't know of anybody in public service who works longer hours than Bill. He's extremely loyal to the system and the interests of judges," George says.

He says Vickrey has taken the heat because he has been "the face" of the administrative apparatus. Vickrey was delegated the function of running the Judicial Council's staff, but "it's a cheap shot," says the former chief, to accuse the AOC director of usurping the Judicial Council's function. "The Judicial Council members are extremely active, and they run the show."

In 2009 massive cuts to the California state budget to offset a $20 billion deficit led to court closings, employee furloughs, and layoffs. Within the judiciary those cutbacks revived old concerns that consolidation of the trial courts under state control had been a ruinous idea. The complaints, coming now from a new crop of critics, have a familiar ring.

Tia Fisher, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, says the AOC acts as if it has sole authority to determine what access to justice means. "Judges—that's our job, not the bureaucratic arm of the judiciary, but judges," she says.

David Lampe, a superior court judge in Kern County, complains that the AOC lacks "institutional tension: There doesn't seem to be anyone there to say no to a project, or to say, 'This project is too big.'"

Fisher and Lampe are among the 14 directors of the Alliance of California Judges, which emerged from the 2009 budget crisis. Its mantra is local autonomy, and it has been unrelenting in its advocacy. Sometimes armed with solid evidence, sometimes not, the alliance has criticized the cost and functionality of the AOC's computer systems and building projects, the agency's motives, and its leadership.

Although the alliance keeps its membership list secret, Lampe estimates the total to be more than 250. Retired Judge Stirling of San Diego and Judge White of Sacramento confirm that they are members.

George calls the alliance "part of a periodic wish for an earlier time and [an expression of] resentment at statewide administration of justice." But Lampe takes issue with that characterization. He acknowledges that the AOC has a role in creating efficiencies and in assuring uniform budgeting. The question, he says, is one of balance.

It's a question of balance for George as well. He agrees that local autonomy is an important principle: After all, local judges are independent constitutional officers. But he says the dissidents don't want to be held accountable to the Judicial Council-and that's wrong.

Early last summer, after George negotiated a funding package that seemed likely to prevent statewide court closings during the 2011 fiscal year, some of his critics backed off.

Yet the alliance has picked up some influential support. David S. Wesley, named last year as assistant presiding judge in Los Angeles County, told the Metropolitan News Enterprise in September that he thought the alliance had some ideas worth discussing. That same month the Los Angeles Daily Journal reported that David Thompson, the new assistant presiding judge in Orange County, said he hoped to "strike an appropriate balance between the powers that be in San Francisco and local autonomy."

The California Judges Association has taken up some of the same issues that the alliance is pressing, calling for better oversight of pay raises given to AOC staff, for example.

In response to such concerns, George appointed an AOC oversight panel: the Judicial Council Advisory Committee on Financial Accountability and Efficiency for the Judicial Branch. As chairwoman he named Sacramento appellate Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who succeeds George as chief justice of California.

Cantil-Sakauye takes office this month armed with many of the talents needed to resolve the current disagreements. Smart, charming, and open to other people's ideas, she has been received enthusiastically by George's opponents as well as his supporters. She's known as a careful listener who distills consensus from what she hears.

"I really want to listen, I like to hear from all voices," Cantil-Sakauye told reporters after her confirmation hearing in August. "I am pretty collaborative, but I like to get to a decision." She says she'll sit down with the alliance judges—George says they never asked to meet with him. And although Cantil-Sakauye has defended the AOC's growth as a function of its added responsibilities, she brings her own perspective to the job.

"I think the new chief justice has a pretty strong recognition that the Judicial Council is the boss over the AOC, and I think that's healthy," says Judge Connelly, who served with Cantil-Sakauye on the Sacramento Superior Court.

George seems content with his legacy, and he says he has taken his critics in stride. "Cyclically, there have always been periods when groups have opposed each other," he says. "Judges will have differences concerning the administration of justice, and I respect that." He views most of the criticism that came his way as constructive.

He explains that he tried to balance the need for individual judges to have independence with the need to preserve an independent judicial branch. Decisional independence can't be ensured, he says, without financial and structural stability for the branch as a whole.

On a Saturday afternoon last November, George is at work in the chambers that he'll soon vacate. The stacks of papers that once covered almost every flat surface have started to disappear. But George digs out a copy of a speech titled "Reorganization of Our Inferior Courts," which Chief Justice Gibson delivered in 1949. Gibson, an early proponent of unifying the trial courts, suggested to his Stanislaus County Bar audience that few lawyers would be able to identify and describe the jurisdictions of the eight types of city and township courts, all below the superior court level, then operating in California.

Eight then. None today.

"We each build on the work of our predecessors," George says, "but we've come a long way."

Claire Cooper, a freelance writer in Oakland, covered legal affairs for the Sacramento Bee for 25 years.

---