A Lot of Fixer Uppers

With its marble interior and grand staircase, the two-story steel and stone courthouse was a civic gem when it was built in 1912. Today it’s a symbol of all that’s wrong with California’s aging courts and the challenges that lay ahead as judiciary leaders try to replace them.

Parking around the courthouse is sparse, so jurors leave their cars in an unpaved lot about a mile away and ride a shuttle downtown. When they arrive at the court, they often have to wait outside, rain or shine, while the bailiffs run the sole security station a few feet from the front door. The heating and air conditioning system is spotty and, until recent fixes were made, employees wore masks in the basement filing room because of mold and asbestos. There’s no jury assembly room, so potential panelists wander the building among juveniles awaiting supposedly confidential proceedings and bailiffs escorting in-custody defendants from the building’s only elevator — if it’s working.

The fire marshal showed up once to inspect the sprinkler system. The court’s operations manager, Rosalie Tucker, had to inform him there isn’t one.

“It’s really a cool old building,” said Ugrin-Capobianco. “But it should probably be a museum.”

There’s new hope for Placerville and dozens of other courthouses the Judicial Council has deemed in serious need of help. Somehow, during one of the state’s worst budget years ever, Chief Justice Ronald George persuaded the governor to sign legislation last week authorizing the sale of $5 billion, fees-secured bonds to renovate ailing court buildings and build new ones.

That, however, was the easy part.

While the construction plan is believed to be the most expensive trial court capital improvement project in the nation’s history, $5 billion will only cover about half of the state’s courthouse needs. Of the 68 state courthouses the Judicial Council has declared the worst of the worst, only 40 — if revenue projections prove accurate — will receive bond money.

The Administrative Office of the Courts has devised a complex formula (.pdf) to objectively rank each building’s condition. Each facility receives a score based on its security system, levels of overcrowding, physical condition and need for new judgeships. A score at or near 20 means a court has an “immediate” or “critical” need for renovation or replacement — and bond money.

Based on those scores, the Judicial Council has already voted to fund 12 new courthouses in Butte, Tehama, Los Angeles, Yolo, Riverside, Monterey, Sacramento, Sutter, Shasta, Sonoma, Lake and Imperial counties.

That leaves 56 projects, including Placerville, on a waiting list with enough money for just 28. AOC planners won’t release the recommended funding list for another three weeks.

Then the challenges really start.

To pass the $5 billion bond bill over the objections of legislative Republicans, Democrats had to strip the Judicial Council’s initial authority to spend the money. Legislators, including at least a handful of Republicans, will have to restore that authority next year, a process that could insert politics into the project-selection process.

Court leaders are hoping to attract private investment in new courthouses to stretch their bond dollars. Locals could include space for private law offices in a new court complex, for example, and use the lease revenue to offset costs.

But on Sunday the governor, without explanation, vetoed legislation authorizing the Judicial Council to set up so-called public-private partnerships to finance the sweeping construction plans. Now it’s unclear how far court executives can legally go in leveraging bond dollars.

What’s more, the state doesn’t even own all the buildings yet. Although 2002 legislation called for the state to take possession of all 450-plus trial court buildings in the state by 2007, only 152 had transferred from local hands by mid-September. The process has been slowed by concerns about the buildings’ seismic safety conditions and other red tape.

Still, court officials have been almost giddy since Friday when the governor approved the historic bond package.

“This [will] of course not address all of our needs but $5 billion will get us going well on to our objective,” George said.

Like much of California’s public infrastructure, the state’s trial courts have slowly crumbled under the weight of age and lack of funding. Often architectural temples in their heydays, many courthouses no longer meet modern seismic, security, disability-access or even wiring standards.

The problem was made worse by California’s slow transition from county to state court ownership. For more than a decade, fiscally strapped counties have had little incentive to spend heavily on court improvements knowing that many of the buildings would eventually become state property.

Also, there’s been little support for widespread public spending on court construction. In public opinion polls, schools, parks and highways almost always fare far better than courts, which usually rank near the bottom with prisons in terms of voters’ spending priorities.

That’s left judges and court staff scrambling, sometimes creatively, to keep courts functioning at a basic level. Then-Municipal Court Judge Gilbert Lopez of Los Angeles County spent about $3,000 of his own money in 1995 to build furniture for the conversion of a former jury room and restroom into a courtroom and chambers.

“If you walked over the carpet [in the judge's chambers], you could see the indentations where the toilets used to be,” Lopez, now a superior court judge in better digs, recalled.

In Tehama County, a judge has convened proceedings in the parking lot because the courtroom is too small to contain all the defendants who arrive on busy calendar days.

In Sutter County, the women’s restroom is sometimes used to hold prisoners. An alternating sign near the door lets the public know whether it’s OK to go inside.

In Mariposa County, in-custody defendants wait in an employee hallway before they’re called into the courtroom, forcing staff and judges to regularly pass by them.

“You always just kind of smile and say good morning and good afternoon to them as you pass by,” said Superior Court Judge F. Dana Walton. “We make it work.”

Walton’s sentiments were common among judges and staff who work in some of California’s neediest — and unluckiest — courtrooms. Mariposa, with a score just half-a-point too low, did not make the coveted bond-funding eligibility list. Projects in San Francisco (a new criminal courthouse), Alameda (an addition to the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse in Oakland) and Santa Cruz (an addition to the Santa Cruz courthouse) counties also just missed the cutoff.

Although Mariposa’s courthouse, which claims to be the oldest in continuous operation west of the Rocky Mountains, will not be replaced any time soon, Walton said he doesn’t begrudge the process or the eventual recipients.

“We’re not really much different from any other court in the state,” he said. “We’ll wait. I’ll probably be retired by [the time money is available]. But that’s OK.”

The AOC will set aside some money to spend on smaller projects — things like new roofs or heating systems.

Courts that don’t quite make the funding list this time may have to wait for a new bond measure, said Kelly Quinn, the AOC’s senior manager of planning.

“The need is there, and there will be a need for some other type of funding,” she said. “Whether it’s other kinds of fee increases or whether it’s a general obligation bond, I don’t know.”

The first phases of the 40 new construction projects could start as early as late 2009, according to current plans.