Robert Parkin
Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge
 

Political Experience and Easygoing Manner Come Together in Administrator Known for Producing Consensus Metropolitan News-Enterprise, May 19, 1997 By ROBERT GREENE, Staff Writer

Only a few dozen jurors milled about last Monday in the mall between the Central Courthouse and the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, where the Superior Court was putting on a show.

There were booths for free legal advice and for bids on silent auction knick-knacks, and high school troupes sang and danced at the top of the steps, but the blazing sun directly overhead kept most of the lunch-breaking jurors clustered under the umbrellas at the Pasqua coffee stand.

Still, the civic officials making speeches to launch the Juror and Employer Appreciation Week festival spoke as though they were addressing throngs. From a tiny podium, an ebullient Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke sounded like she was warming up a political convention. Her colleague, Mike Antonovich, seemed to be reading from a proclamation. Each spoke like the polished politicians they are.

Not Robert Parkin. The presiding judge of the world's largest local trial court sounded like he was chatting to one or two people he just met.

"We realize that jurors are the backbone of the entire justice system," he said, hardly raising his voice. "We are striving to make your service as pleasurable as it can be."

At one of the Pasqua tables, a woman wearing a juror identification badge leaned over to two others who donned the same kind of badges.

"He seems like a real kinda guy," she told her co-panelists. "Nice, but no-nonsense. I wish our judge was more like that."

Easygoing Administrator

That seems to be pretty much the story with Parkin. Even before he took the reins as Los Angeles Superior Court presiding judge on Jan. 1, he had established a reputation as an easygoing administrator who worked for consensus.

"I guess I'm easygoing, I don't know," Parkin says. "I'm not going to let it kill me, that's true."

There is plenty for a presiding judge to get worked up about if he wants to. The court perpetually faces a funding crisis, lacks adequate security in several courthouses in which criminal defendants are tried, uses outmoded computer systems, and has inadequate facilities to tend to the needs of the 5,000-6,000 jurors who are serving on any one day.

Then there is the matter of consolidation with the county's 24 municipal courts, an efficiency move that voters will likely be asked to consider next year. Parkin has to anticipate the outcome and draw up suggested boundaries for sub-districts of what would be an even more massive Los Angeles Superior Court system.

And like all presiding judges, Parkin has to extract agreement and support from 238 judges who are themselves independent and are used to having absolute control in their courtrooms. It is a task that more than a few people have likened to "herding cats."

But it's a task at which Parkin excels.

"He was the city attorney of Long Beach," Sloan says. "It's not just that he had to get elected, but he had to function in that environment. A lot of judges don't have that very political background."

Sloan says the experience helps Parkin deal with the Legislature and the governor's office. It also comes in handy dealing with his colleagues.

"You know what they say about getting judges to agree," Sloan says. "It's like herding cats."

Parkin, a former police officer and prosecutor and the two-term Long Beach city attorney, was appointed by Long Beach neighbor George Deukmejian to a new Superior Court post in 1985. He had heard cases in his home town, in Norwalk and downtown for nine years when his colleagues elected him serve as assistant presiding judge under Gary Klausner, a judge who is also known for his consensus-building style but who lacks the political experience-and perhaps some of the relaxed affability-of Parkin.

Parkin took on his new administrative duties just in time for a grueling struggle with the county and the state over funding. Klausner tried to made reform of the court's jury services the hallmark of his tenure, but he had to deal with gripes from the cash-strapped Board of Supervisors that the Superior Court's funding request was an attempt to bankrupt the county.

Quietly, Parkin began to absorb much of the flak. As the months went by, he became as likely as Klausner to field press calls on actions of the state Trial Court Budget Commission or to comment on bills affecting trial court unification or funding. By the end of the summer, Parkin had become, to all outward appearances, the court's de facto presiding judge.

Meanwhile, Gov. Pete Wilson had appointed Ronald George to be the state's new chief justice, and George immediately went to work trying to secure consensus on a new state trial court funding measure. Los Angeles Superior Court judges still had strong reservations, though, and on Oct. 31 Parkin, as "Presiding Judge Elect," signed with Klausner a letter to Wilson urging "serious exploration" of returning trial court funding to counties.

George fired off an angry response, castigating Klausner and Parkin for abandoning the carefully negotiated state funding mechanism.

"[D]espite your often repeated claims of a desire for improved communication with me and with the Judicial Council, your letter, representing a 180 degree change in position, was sent without the courtesy of a telephone call to me to discuss its contents, or even a direct notification that you had changed your views," the chief justice wrote.

The two judges then wrote a conciliatory letter to George, and Parkin at the time said they never suggested they did not support the trial court funding bill.

"But the bill failed, and we don't know if it's going to pass next time," Parkin explained. "We just suggested other means that maybe it's time to look at."

Now, Parkin says he was somewhat surprised at George's reaction.

Still, Parkin says he and his colleagues still can take little comfort in a state trial court funding measure (it was approved by the Assembly last week and is pending in the Senate). The reason is the very size of the Los Angeles Superior Court-which represents a third of the superior court cases, resources and judges in the state.

"The problem is, in L.A. the numbers are big numbers," he explains. "If something falls through the cracks it's not a $100,000 item, it can be a several million dollar item. There are a lot of other costs associated with courts that are not included in [the legal] definition of trial court operations, and there's got to be some fixed responsibility for funding those."

Examples include money to pay for criminal defense of indigents, and expert witness fees for people who can not pay for them. That money comes out of the county public defender's budget, but if the county does not have it, the court cannot operate.

Parkin calculates between $35 million and $37 million that is needed to operate the courts beyond the definition of "trial court operations." Besides, he says, if the court outspends the county's cap—which would be based on the 1994-1995 fiscal year, no matter how high court operating costs rise in coming years—the "guarantee" that the state will pick up the rest of the tab is no guarantee at all.

"Well, we're just in competition with every other agency that's funded out of the state general fund, and it's going to vary from year to year," he says. "And there's still going to be an element of uncertainty in years ahead. I'm satisfied the Legislature is not going to leave the courts high and dry but there's always going to be an element of uncertainty."

 Planning Impossible

With continued uncertainty on funding, Parkin says it is impossible to do advance planning, especially for projects that have to be phased in over time, such as improved technology. A case in point is the criminal case management system known as TCIS, a system Parkin readily acknowledges "is not user-friendly."

The benefit of TCIS is that it is being used by the sheriff, the Probation department and the district attorney and can—theoretically—keep tabs on a criminal case from beginning to end.

The problems include reportedly mounting overtime costs for courtroom clerks who have to stay after hours to input data, and a rebellion among some judges who think the system is unsalvageable.

"I don't think we've ever put an automated system anyplace that there have not been bugs, and there has been a lot of resistance to it," Parkin says, "but you know, people have to just work at it and just overcome the problems. It's like anything that's new, there's sort of a natural resistance to change."

One problem Parkin says does not get much notice outside his office but which is uppermost in his mind is re-setting the boundaries of the court's 12 districts. They have not been redrawn in years, but demographic shifts have sent caseloads soaring in some districts while they simply creep along in others.

Setting district lines to ensure more equitable caseloads is a prerequisite to further consolidation of superior and municipal courts, Parkin says.

He says he would much rather be able to devote attention to concerns Klausner raised about courthouse security and juror services. But there is plenty of time for those and other problems-Parkin has another year and a half to go in his tenure before returning to the trial courtroom.

"I'm sure that by the end of my stint here I'll be thrilled to get back in to a trial court," Parkin says. "But I enjoy doing this. I enjoy administration. I get a kind of satisfaction in trying to make things work."

Able Administrator

Long Beach attorney Thomas Stolpman, now president of the State Bar of California, says he found City Attorney Parkin to be "an able administrator who knew what he was doing" when his firm was involved in litigation with the City of Long Beach, and that as a judge Parkin ran a fair courtroom.

"Win or lose I want a judge who is going to give my client a fair trial," Stolpman says. "I think he walked that line as well as many."
But Stolpman is expecting much more from Parkin in the next year and a half. As presiding judge of the nation's largest trial court, Parkin will be expected to take steps to ease the lot of legal practitioners. As an example, Stolpman points to efforts to bring uniformity to local court rules.

"I'm hoping Bob is in a position to institutionalize some changes, Stolpman says. "I think he has the strength of character to be a leader. One of the problems our court has is that it is sometimes a leader, sometimes a follower, out of step with courts around the state. But he's a good guy and has a chance to do some good things."

Sloan, who will be a member of the policy-setting Judicial Council next year, agrees.

"The Los Angeles Superior Court has operated almost as an independent entity," he says. "Those days are over. Now, I'd like to see them get ready for unification. Bob can move them in that direction."

Parkin says he doesn't move anyone. He just looks for consensus, and helps his colleagues find it.

"They are all independent judicial officers," Parkin says. "You don't really want to try to tell them what to do. That would be a little like—what do they say?—like trying to herd cats."
 

Copyright, 1997, Metropolitan News Company