BILL ANALYSIS
AB 159
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 159 (Jones)
As Amended September 7, 2007
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |78-1 |(June 6, 2007) |SENATE: |39-0 |(September 10, |
| | | | | |2007) |
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Original Committee Reference: JUD.
SUMMARY : Seeks to authorize 50 new superior court judgeships
and the conversion of existing subordinate judicial officer
(SJO) positions to judgeships upon the vacancy of SJO positions
and subsequent authorization by the Legislature. Specifically,
this bill :
1)Creates 50 new superior court judgeships, upon appropriation
by the Legislature, pursuant to specified uniform and
objective criteria as updated and approved by the Judicial
Council on February 23, 2007.
2)Authorizes the total conversion of 162 SJO positions to
superior court judgeships, upon subsequent appropriation and
authorization by the Legislature, pursuant to specified
uniform and objective criteria approved by the Judicial
Council, except that no more than 16 SJO positions may be
converted in any fiscal year.
3)Declares the Legislature's intent in enacting this SJO
conversion program to restore an appropriate balance between
subordinate judicial officers and judges, and to ensure that
critical case types are heard by superior court judges.
4)Clarifies that the Governor shall release specified
demographic data relative to ethnicity, race and gender of all
judicial applicants whose applications are and are not sent to
the State Bar for evaluation.
5)Continues in place last year's requirement that the Judicial
Council, on or before November 1 of this year, adopt and
report to the Legislature annually thereafter upon, judicial
administration standards and measures that promote the fair
and efficient administration of justice.
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6)Continues in place last year's requirements that on or before
March 1 of this year, and annually thereafter, all of the
following shall occur: a) the Governor shall disclose
aggregate statewide demographic data provided by all judicial
applicants relative to ethnicity and gender; b) the designated
agency of the State Bar responsible for evaluation of judicial
candidates shall collect and release statewide demographic
data provided by judicial applicants reviewed and a statewide
summary of the recommendations of the designated agency by
ethnicity and gender; and, c) the Administrative Office of the
Courts shall collect and release the demographic data provided
by justices and judges relative to ethnicity and gender by
specific jurisdiction.
The Senate amendments make clarifying changes, add further data
requirements to be released by the Governor regarding judicial
applicants, further clarify the SJO conversion process, and
require the State Bar to consider legal experience broadly in
determining the qualifications of a candidate for judicial
office.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Provides that the Legislature shall prescribe the number of
judges and provide for the officers and employees of each
superior court.
2)Authorizes 50 new trial court judgeships pursuant to
appropriation by the Legislature in 2006-2007.
3)Requires that on or before March 1 of this year, and annually
thereafter, all of the following shall occur: a) the Governor
shall disclose aggregate statewide demographic data provided
by all judicial applicants relative to ethnicity and gender;
b) the designated agency of the State Bar responsible for
evaluation of judicial candidates shall collect and release
statewide demographic data provided by judicial applicants
reviewed and a statewide summary of the recommendations of the
designated agency by ethnicity and gender; and, c) the
Administrative Office of the Courts shall collect and release
the demographic data provided by justices and judges relative
to ethnicity and gender by specific jurisdiction.
AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill was substantially similar
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to the version approved by the Senate.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations analysis:
The annual full-year personnel cost for a judgeship is $811,500,
including salaries and benefits for the judge, five support
staff, and 1.1 bailiffs. Staff notes prior versions of the
measure authorized 50 additional judgeships, the same number in
the Governor's proposed 2007-08 Budget and the May Revision.
Both appropriate $40.575 million for the new judgeships and
include $6 million in one-time costs (for furniture and
equipment) and $6 million in ongoing costs (for construction,
new leases and facility modifications). SB 77 (Ducheny), the
pending budget bill, authorizes approximately $24 million in
one-time capital improvement and equipment costs and $3 million
in compensation, for one month's worth of salary, for 50 judges,
to allow time for the judicial review and appointment process.
The cost to convert a SJO position to a judgeship is about
$26,000 (the salary difference between an SJO and a judge);
therefore, increased costs for 162 conversions are estimated at
$4.2 million annually once fully implemented over several years,
as vacancies occur. Judicial Council indicates it intends to
absorb the cost difference within the Trial Court Trust Fund.
COMMENTS : This bill, sponsored by the judicial branch of our
government, seeks to make progress in adding judicial resources
to an increasingly overburdened court system. In support of the
measure, the author states that California is facing a severe
shortage of trial court judgeships, and access to the courts is
fundamentally compromised by judicial shortages.
According to the Judicial Council, since 1980, the total number
of new judges in the trial courts has grown by approximately
20%. However during the same period, total population in
California grew by more than 50%. The Judicial Council reports
that the state faces a "judicial gap" that portends a number of
disturbing long term consequences: a significant decrease in
Californians' access to the courts; compromised public safety,
an unstable business climate, and, in some courts, enormous
backlogs that inhibit fair, timely, and equitable justice.
According to the Judicial Council, the court system, faced with
a large shortage of judges, has been forced to meet its workload
demands by appointing commissioners and referees to act as
temporary judges. However the Council notes this is not a
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viable long term solution. Increased reliance on "SJOs"
(subordinate judicial officers) has resulted in many critical
court proceedings being heard by judicial officers who are not
accountable to the public. Statewide, SJOs typically spend an
average of 55% of their time serving as temporary judges; in
large courts the proportion is 75 to 80%. This bill allows up
to 16 SJO positions to be converted to superior court judgeships
for each fiscal year, with legislative authorization required on
an annual basis.
When considering the merits of last year's legislation seeking
to authorize 50 new judgeships, the Speaker of the Assembly and
Chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee insisted that before
more judgeships would be authorized, new mechanisms would need
to be adopted to help address the lack of ethnic and gender
diversity within the judicial branch. As part of their efforts
to address this serious deficiency, unprecedented new diversity
reporting requirements were negotiated with and agreed to by the
Governor to begin the challenging process of addressing this
problem. The State Bar, the Governor's Office, and the Judicial
Council were all required to prepare and issue reports on the
diversity of the judicial applicant pool and of the existing
judiciary.
Last March, these three reports were issued, and they underscore
just how insufficiently diverse California's judicial branch
currently is. As noted in subsequent news analyses of the
reports, the counties of Alameda, Los Angeles and San Francisco
were reported to have the most ethnically diverse superior court
benches among California's large counties, while San Francisco
has the highest percentage of women. In Los Angeles, 39% of the
judges who answered the survey described themselves as ethnic
minorities. According to these initial statistics, the least
diverse superior court bench amongst large counties is currently
found in Contra Costa, with 82% of the bench reportedly not
ethnically diverse. As for women, San Francisco holds the
distinction of being the only large county with as many women as
men (50% each). There are also a remarkable number of trial
courts in California that have all male judges and no female
judges.
The Los Angeles Times editorialized on the startling lack
of diversity reflected by the newly reported data. In its
editorial entitled "Judges don't do justice to California's
diversity," the Times wrote on March 5, 2007, that "In a
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society based on the rule of law, it is crucial that
judges, lawyers, litigants and criminal defendants have
faith that courts can mete out justice impartially. That
faith can be undermined by a court system in which
successive generations of judges are disproportionately
members of one ethnic group and litigants and defendants
are overwhelmingly members of another?"
An earlier version of this legislation additionally sought
to statutorily require the disclosure of the membership of
the heretofore confidential local committees that have
assisted this and earlier governor's determinations of
which judicial applications should be reviewed by the State
Bar. However upon learning from the Governor's Office that
the membership of these local committees is already
scheduled to be made public soon, the author agreed to
remove this provision from the measure.
Analysis Prepared by : Drew Liebert / JUD. / (916) 319-2334
FN: 0003459