Chief Justice outlines plans for increased funds

On March 19, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye gave her annual State of the Judiciary speech to lawmakers in Sacramento. For her, the moment was an occasion for celebration.

Three months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed the most generous budget for the courts in many years, which included a significant chunk of discretionary spending the Judicial Council could use as it sees fit. It was perhaps a watershed moment in Cantil-Sakauye's seven-year tenure as chief justice.

She took office in the middle of deep cuts to the court's budget and has always had to contend with other people's priorities for the judicial branch's money. The loosening purse strings could allow Cantil-Sakauye to finally put in place changes her Futures Commission laid out in a report a year ago.

With that in mind, she talked last week with Daily Journal Editor David Houston about her plans for the year, and how the legal community can help with that. The following is a condensed version of that discussion.

Daily Journal: Many of the items that received extra money in the budget last year, things like dependency counsel funds, were fought for by outside interest groups. The larger amount of money this year would appear to provide a better blueprint of what the Judicial Council itself thinks is important. Is that a fair assumption?

Cantil-Sakauye: I think that's a fair assumption. I would also say the Judicial Council always fought for dependency counsel funds. We fought for it every year. In fact, many years ago I did a blueprint for California's budget and indicated that dependency counsel back then needed approximately $33 million, so that has always been in our ask, in addition to other areas. And you're right. This year, there was an assumption that the governor listened to our proposal and looked at our needs. He looked at our efficiencies. He looked at our plans. And we're gratified by his strong proposal for the branch.

DJ: Yet, even though you got funding increases, there's still not a lot to go around. There's about $19 million for self-help services and about $3 million for unrepresented litigants. That doesn't seem like a lot in the scheme of things.

Cantil-Sakauye: I think the biggest part of the governor's plan is that he intends, first of all, to bring all courts up to a funding level of about 76 percent [of their overall need, according to updated case weights]. With of course the caveat that no state-funded entity is ever fully funded, the courts will just be stronger when they're funded at 76 percent and they're able to make choices with that revenue, how they're going to distribute it within their community and their courts. It could be self-help. It could be something else. But just the fact that the courts will be brought up to 76 percent funding level across the board will be a huge difference for us.

DJ: The Futures Commission report focused a lot on the cost of the various ideas. Can you talk about how those costs will be determined and whether they line up with what other courts in other states have spent on similar efforts?

Cantil-Sakauye: I can generally tell you that the Futures Commission looked at past ideas and thought of new ideas. But when they looked at ideas, either past or present, they tried to ascertain what the costs would be today and in the future. In doing so, I know that they looked at other models in other states. At the same time, it's not always easy to cost these things out accurately and over the long run. But we know that we would like to. For example, in the traffic proposal, I think the governor proposes in his budget for the branch $3.4 million to start the process of getting traffic to migrate to an electronic system. So obviously we will work with $3.4 million and we will use it the best way possible. We try to leverage it. But that obviously means we're not going to turn our entire traffic system in 58 courts immediately. It'll be gradual. It will be with pilots. It will be best practices. It'll probably be tied to getting matching funds from counties or cities as we move to this different platform for handling traffic tickets.

DJ: Were there other things members of the Futures Committee wanted but that turned out to be impractical or too costly?

Cantil-Sakauye: The Futures Commission recommendations were many. But knowing that we could not execute all of them, the Judicial Council selected three to move forward on. But there's still a host of other recommendations that we are not acting on. For example, there was a recommendation that we have a single family juvenile court, that instead of having dependency, delinquency and family law, we fold that into one wrap-around court so that the family goes to one court for all these legal issues in the system. The Judicial Council didn't choose to act on that one, at least in the near future, because we looked at the needs and said, "We know self-represented litigants continue to grow as a population, so we need to address that." We also picked traffic. We've had an historic backlog in traffic and I think we can save money in traffic by migrating to a technology-based system. And of course language access, which is an immediate issue for California and has been for many, many years. We are also looking at the civil justice reform initiative. And as part of that, we have chosen, as the council, to go forward with creating an intermediate tier, a tier with commensurate discovery limitations that would be more acceptable to folks who have the kind of lawsuit that falls between $50,000 and $250,000, and then would able to obtain, potentially, representation with more limited discovery in the intermediate tier.

DJ: Were there other reforms you wanted to undertake but couldn't because of labor issues?

Cantil-Sakauye: We tried to look honestly at what was the most immediate need in California. And the beauty of the Futures Commission recommendations, regardless of the recommendation, where people may or may not agree, is that the report chronicles the history of the recommendation, ... like the court reporters question. And then it explained the costs and explained the benefits. Then it explained the future -- that it might be a project for the future. But we have no plans to move forward on the court reporter issue or even the administrative recommendation that explored collective bargaining in the trial courts. Those are issues that to me are helpful in the Futures Commission report primarily because they gave us a place where we could chronicle our history and our efforts. And from there, if anyone chooses to tackle those, [they] would know the history and may be better able to have success in those areas.

DJ: What about the interpreters? Especially with so many languages in California, what about that issue? Are you going to able to do what you think needs to be done?

Cantil-Sakauye: As you know, a few years ago I established the language access commission and they came back with recommendations. Now Justice [Mariano-Florentino] Cuellar has been leading the implementation of those recommendations. We have been working within our financial means to implement what we can. In this governor's proposed budget for the branch, he has proposed $4 million for language access, which includes interpreters for civil cases. So in my view, the language access commission and the implantation task force have been truly successful because we have seen this governor and Legislature propose more money to language access than ever before.

DJ: $4 million still doesn't seem like a lot, considering the dynamics of California.

Cantil-Sakauye: That's true. But keep in mind the $4 million builds upon the previous dollars this governor has provided to the Judicial Branch for language access. For the current fiscal year, it was $800,000, so it would be $4 million in addition to that.

DJ: What can lawyers do to support the judicial branch and help it move into the future?

Cantil-Sakauye: As corny as this may sound: Support this governor's proposed budget. There's approximately $123 million in new money that would go into the base budget of the trial courts. Trial courts would have more flexibility and maybe could be incentivized to shore up any deficiencies they have in their civil justice system. Lawyers on the civil side tell me that courts are still delayed, for example, in civil law and motion. So if a court were to obtain some portion of that $123 million, they could be incentivized to use some of that funding in a way that improves the efficiency of law and motion.

So lawyers will play an important part in supporting this budget and supporting a civil justice reform initiative and going to their own presiding judges and saying, "What can we do to help you implement any new changes that might help the court run more efficiently?"

Daily Journal staff writer Malcolm Maclachlan contributed to this report.