Superior Court Judge Tia Fisher, an Arcadia resident, presented the latest in government waste and inefficiency on Friday.  Tia, who lives in Arcadia and has three children, one of whom will be graduating this June from Arcadia High School, presented a fascinating story of government waste in our court system.

        Tia told about the creation of the Alliance of Judges, which started in San Diego in September,2009  with a small number of California judges frustrated with mismanagement of court resources.  Our own Judge Bruce Marrs was one of the founders.  This group has now grown to 400 judges.  The purpose of the Alliance is to educate the public about the judicial branch of government and the mismanagement of the court’s resources, which is damaging our judicial system. 

        She pointed out that judiciary is one area of government that needs more coverage and public awareness.  Since judges are non-political, they cannot speak out the issues confronting the State, but can speak out about judicial administration.  The Alliance was formed because courts were being closed and cases started backing up delaying the resolution of cases.  Furthermore, local control of the courts was being eroded and there was patent wasteful spending.  A seminal date for the loss of local control and the alleged wastefulness impacting the courts, came in 1997, when the Judicial Council gave up control to the Administrative Office of the Courts, (AOC) located in San Francisco.  This body made up of retired judges and a staff now numbering 1000 people has undertaken projects that have cost the taxpayers dearly and cut out funding for the actual day to day running of the courts.

        An illustration of the waste in both time and expense is the computer system engendered by the AOC, which was created to assimilate information from all the courts in California and to create an information bank.  The information was to be assimilated in Arizona and made available to all of the courts. That has not happened and only seven counties have been able to tie into the system and even then it isn’t working.  A video highlighting the inequities was shown to the meeting and judges testifying that the system needs to be junked.

        Other examples of the excesses affected by the AOC are the expenditure of removing gum from a courthouse entrance for $8000 and $1700 per square foot of building to erect a three judge courthouse in Alpine County,  and where there are only two judges.  The original cost of the Computer system was estimated at $1.4 Billion Dollars, this has now grown to $1.7 Billion!  The Alliance claims this is a total waste of taxpayer monies and a loss of necessary funding to keep the courts operating on an even keel.

        The courts are in crisis and the Alliance is promoting a legislative bill to deal with the AOC and reallocating funding to the courts on a local level.   The judges of the Alliance are not “rebels”, they are officials and citizens worried about the lack of local control and sound and expeditious administration of justice.