Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Vote 167-66 to Reject Unification

Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Thursday, Dec. 2, 1999
Page 1

Chavez, McBeth Issue Call for Third Round of Unification Voting

By ROBERT GREENE, Staff Writer

Court leaders in Los Angeles County yesterday called for a third vote on trial court unification, with judicial balloting expected to start Dec. 15.

The vote would create a new Los Angeles Superior Court of more than 400 judges by the end of January--but only if the currently sitting Superior Court judges reverse themselves after two strong votes against merger and this time endorse the move.

The first signal of a shift in stance came Tuesday, as the judges strongly backed a governance plan for a unified court. The Memorandum of Agreement on governance was also approved by the county's municipal court judges, who have twice voted in favor of unification but were blocked both times by their Superior Court counterparts.

Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Victor Chavez, who was joined in his call by Los Angeles Municipal Court Presiding Judge Veronica McBeth, cautioned that approval of the MOA did not necessary imply certain approval of unification.

But Chavez said his court's judges had benefited from an educational period of nearly a year and a half, during which a variety of issues and questions regarding the possible effect of unification were studied.

"I would expect the vote to be very close" in the Superior Court, Chavez said. "I really feel that it's the first time the judges feel ready to vote."

Quick Implementation

If unification is approved this time, Chavez said, he would ask that it be implemented as soon as possible after the vote is tallied. In the case of the 54 of California's 58 counties in which the courts have already unified, the state Judicial Council generally has taken between one and two weeks to certify the vote and approve the merger.

The council began a two-day meeting and is expected at today's session to grant another in a series of extensions to deadlines for complex rules mandating cooperation and resource sharing among the Los Angeles courts. Absent the call for a third vote, the council was set to begin penalizing the courts, cutting pay for municipal court judges and mulling other sanctions.

A special panel of the council is also meeting today and is expected to issue the formal call for a unification vote, based on the application submitted yesterday by Chavez and McBeth.

Courts here have been under increasing pressure from the council, which has continually imposed tougher mandates for coordination--a relationship that technically falls short of outright merger but which was beginning to resemble it more and more.

Unification in effect eliminates a county's municipal courts and consolidates them into a larger superior court. Backers say the move will save money by conserving resources and eliminating duplication in administration.

Administrative Unification

Los Angeles County's trial courts were already headed toward a type of union several years ago with the creation of the Administratively Unified Courts of Los Angeles County. The AUC joined the non-judicial leaders of the Superior Court and the Los Angeles Municipal Court, and some of the other 23 municipal courts in the county also began to join.

But the Los Angeles Municipal Court left the AUC after opponents of outright merger successfully kept a forced-unification ballot measure from voters.

A legislative compromise led instead to last year's Senate Constitutional Amendment 4, a ballot measure that left unification up to the discretion of each county's judges.

Voters approved the initiative, known as Proposition 220, last year.

Some courts, such as those in Ventura County, voted to unify almost immediately. Most followed suit over the following months, although a few were delayed while seeking "preclearance" from the U.S. Justice Department to assure that elimination of their municipal court districts did not improperly reduce the voting power of minority voters. Courts in two counties are still awaiting preclearance.

Only in two counties--Kern and Los Angeles--was unification defeated.

The first vote here appeared doomed even before it started as the Los Angeles Superior Court's then-presiding judge, Robert Parkin, said his judges were simply not ready to consider the issue. With a July 1998 vote already called, Parkin said he would call for a second vote the following December.

As expected, the municipal court judges said yes, the Superior Court judges said no.

The call for a December vote never came as a Superior Court committee studied unification issues. The panel's report, released last April, focused on possible lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act, but many municipal court judges labeled the issue a pretext for avoiding merger.

The real issue, some judges said, was the Superior Court jurists' worries over loss of status and seniority.

In a second round of voting last June, the Superior Court judges again blocked unification--this time by an even greater margin than before.

Court leaders then began a series of joint efforts to hammer out a template for governance of a unified court. Early proposals from the municipal courts were rejected by the Superior Court, and vice-versa.

The governance plan that came up for a vote beginning Nov. 19 called for a new Executive Committee whose members would be elected based on court district assignments rather than seniority. Chavez would serve as presiding judge of the expanded court for another year, followed by current Superior Court Assistant Presiding Judge James Bascue for two years.

The presiding judge after Bascue would be elected by all of the expanded court's judges.

All current Superior Court judges would be deemed senior to all current municipal court judges. But seniority would be only one of several factors used in determining courthouse and case assignments.

Chavez, who earlier this week made courthouse assignments for his judges for the coming year, said such assignments are not used to punish or reward jurists but to best pair each bench officer's abilities and experience with the requirements of the task. Judges from neither the Superior Court nor the municipal courts should worry that unification will mean they will be sent across the county for no reason, Chavez said.

"I've only gotten a few calls from judges" who weren't happy with their assignments this time around, Chavez said.

Of the 230 Superior Court judges voting on the governance plan, 204 voted in favor. That was in marked contrast to the last round of unification voting, in which 160 judges voted against merger and only 67 voted in favor.

Rio Hondo Municipal Court Judge Frank Gately, chair-elect of the Presiding Judges Association and representative of the 100 judges of the 23 outlying municipal courts, said 91 of those judges voted in favor of the new governance plan.

On the Los Angeles Municipal Court, 60 judges voted yes, three abstained, and 23 voted no--a larger negative vote proportionally than on the other courts, but still a wide margin of acceptance.