Largest counties get most of extra backlog clearance funds

When the Judicial Council approved a second round of $25 million to address court backlogs last month, they increased the amount going to the state’s 15 most populous counties. The reason: The council’s statistics show that overall, court backlogs and slowdowns were more severe in urban areas.

While it’s not possible to get a full rundown yet, the money seems to go toward three main types of expenditure: staff, technology and protective gear.

“Since the start of the pandemic, we have expended thousands of hours in overtime to cover costs related to our staff being asked to work nights and even weekends,” Orange County Superior Court Executive Officer David Yamasaki said in an email. “In light of the distancing requirements, our court has purchased computer equipment and video cameras, and has expended resources in programming, licensing and postage costs to reschedule hearings. All of these expenditures are tied directly to the COVID pandemic and are not expenses that we would incur during a normal budget year.”

“The Sacramento Superior Court has spent and will spend its allocated one-time backlog funding on one-time expenditures such as overtime and the utilization of retired annuitants who were hired to address specific backlogs such as addressing the serious backlogs in criminal cases, processing summary judgments in family law and the endless hours spent re-calendaring pending cases across all case types,” court spokeswoman Kim Pedersen said in an email.

Nevada County’s COVID-19 backlog funding “has been used for a variety of purposes to ensure there is resource availability, capacity, and safety necessary to facilitate processing case backlogs. For example, that includes disinfecting and sanitizing, temporary staffing, air filtration,” and a variety of personal protective equipment, Court Executive Officer Jason Galkin said by email.

When the council approved a second round of $25 million on Jan. 22, it gave about an additional half million dollars to the state’s 15 largest courts.

Los Angeles County saw the bulk of this increase, about $405,000. It took nearly $15.1 million of the overall funding, an amount even larger than its proportion of the state’s population. The Los Angeles County courts have been dealing with a backlog of thousands of criminal court cases and stranded hundreds of additional children in the child welfare system due to an inability to resolve their cases.

Orange County also saw a $444,000 increase over the amount it received when the council distributed the first round of $25 million in July. Fresno, Sacramento, San Bernardino and Ventura all saw increases.

About half of the large counties got less money, but so did most of the state’s smallest counties. Sierra County will receive no new additional money.

Napa will also get less money, but court spokesman Bob Fleshman said the court’s backlog isn’t too bad. He’s also dug into the numbers, finding most of the additional money has gone to about 10 counties with the worst backlogs.

“Napa certainly doesn’t have one of the worst backlogs in the state,” Fleshman said. “There were 34 courts that received less money in the second allocation than in the first. I think that’s reflective of the fact the backlog has been addressed by many. Obviously there’s still some pretty severe backlogs out there.”

The report on the latest funding from the council’s Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee included statistics showing the number of case dispositions from each court between March and August 2019 and the same period last year. Of the 19 courts that saw a greater than 50% drop in dispositions, nine were among the state’s 15 largest counties. The biggest productivity drops were in Sacramento and San Diego county courts.

Sacramento’s Pedersen said much of that court’s money has gone to addressing criminal cases. Sacramento is also one of the fastest-growing areas of the state, something she said gave that court less of a margin of error when the crisis hit.

“The backlog funding was extremely beneficial to our court and the community given that Sacramento has been and continues to be one of the lowest funded and under-resourced courts compounded by having one of the highest backlog rates in the state,” Pedersen said. “The backlogs will take years to address in order to bring our court back to having one of the best clearance rates in the state.”