Lines are about to get longer at the Courthouse...

By Nathan McIntire


County officials will lay off 329 Superior Court employees by April 1, a court official said Friday. An additional 500 employees will be laid off in September, according to John Clark, executive officer/clerk of Los Angeles County Superior Court. Blaming the state budget crisis and a $79.3 million shortfall in the county court system this fiscal year, Clark sent a memo to the court's 5,400 employees Friday detailing the planned cuts.

"The current budget situation is more severe than anyone has seen in the past," Clark wrote. "Unfortunately, we see no relief on the horizon." Clark said the court system's budget deficit is expected to grow to $140 million by fiscal year 2011-12, which begins in July. The memo said long-range estimates show that as many as 1,800 court staff could be lost over the next four years, representing a 31-percent reduction in staff. "We are experiencing a structural deficit from which there will be nothing that looks like a recovery," Clark wrote. "We will become a smaller court." In an interview Friday, Clark said the layoffs are being staggered because the system could not function if it lost more than 800 people all at once.

The County Superior Court system encompasses 48 courthouses and, according to its Web site has jurisdiction over several types of cases including:

• Cases involving all types of civil disputes with claims of damages of more than $25,000.00.
  
• Felony offenses punishable by death or imprisonment in state prison.
  
• Cases involving divorce, legal separation and paternity.
  
• Cases involving dependent minors who have been abused or neglected, and minors who are accused of crimes, infractions or incorrigible behavior.
  
• The Juvenile Court also handles adoption proceedings.
  
• Cases involving the treatment and custody of mentally ill persons.
  
• Cases involving the estates of deceased persons as well as the guardianship and conservatorship of estates for those unable to care for themselves.
  
• The court also has limited jurisdiction over small claims and traffic cases.

The cutbacks will mean a drastic reduction in the availability of many services, Clark said. "Lines are going to get longer," he said. "People's waits are going to get longer." The traffic courts are already at the point of providing an "unacceptable" level of service, Clark said. He said his office designed the layoffs to minimally affect criminal cases but added that civil cases will take the biggest hit and could take up to 5 years to resolve if the layoffs are fully implemented.

Pasadena attorney and Los Angeles Bar Association President Don Mike Anthony sent a letter to the court earlier this month protesting the layoff plan, saying it would be "devastating" for juvenile and family courts. If the layoffs take place, about 30 percent of juvenile and family courts will have to shut down, Anthony said in an interview Friday. Families in need of custody orders could have to wait three to four months to get them, instead of about 30 days under the court's current composition. "The delays and impact on families and children will be unconscionable," Anthony wrote in his letter. The layoffs and subsequent court closures would also significantly affect the ability of lawyers to do business, Anthony said. He suggested that the budget deficit be filled with funds currently slated for the construction of new courthouses.

A state Senate bond measure that went into effect last year to fund the construction of courthouses has already generated more than $80 million in fees in Los Angeles, and a portion of that money should be used to mitigate the court's budget deficit, Anthony said.

But unless such a solution materializes, people like Cynthia Garcia, a clerk at the Pasadena Courthouse, will continue to worry about their jobs. Garcia was notified of the layoffs Friday, and though she is worried her job could be on the cut list, she and her co-workers were trying not to talk about it. "We're trying to avoid it to not stress out," she said.

Clark said everyone from employees to customers of the system will be hurt by the cuts "Those folks are very necessary for the court and we believe that these layoffs, along with the furloughs and the loss of 156 people in attrition, has caused and will cause delays of service and a fundamental denial of justice to the people that we serve," Clark said.


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