Effects of Gramm-Rudman Feared : Counties Want State to Carry Court Costs

At 9 a.m. last Wednesday, as they do five days a week, plaintiffs, attorneys, judges, bailiffs and clerks assembled in courtrooms around the county--in traffic courts, in the County Jail building, in scattered Municipal and Superior courts and in those two big, chilly downtown palaces of justice, the Criminal Courts Building and the Civil Courthouse.

Briefs were filed, pleas entered, trials scheduled, arguments begun, juries impaneled, testimony recorded and people were made happy by legal victories or thrown into despair by defeat and delay.

And the costs mounted. More than $600,000 a year to maintain the average courtroom, with its judges, bailiffs, clerks and paper work. More than $4,000 a day for the average criminal courtroom, more than $3,000 a day for probate court, most of it paid for by county property taxpayers.

All those people, and all that money, are part of a major fiscal battle shaping up in the state that has been touched off by rising welfare, health and criminal justice costs in urban counties and made worse, if court appeals succeed, by the new Gramm-Rudman federal deficit-cutting limits. It pits Republican Gov. George Deukmejian against Democratic legislators and the conservative-controlled Los Angeles County government.

Los Angeles County and other counties want the state, with its broader tax base, including levies on income, sales and other sources, to pay the entire $750-million-a-year cost of these courts statewide instead of just 10%, as is now the case.

Approval of such a plan by the Legislature and Deukmejian would free an additional $163 million a year in Los Angeles County property tax revenue to help meet county budget deficits predicted to be $180.2 million in the coming fiscal year and $75.9 million in the 1987-88 fiscal year. But Deukmejian opposes state financing of county courts unless changes are made in court procedure that some Democratic legislators fear would limit individual rights in court.

The proposal for state financing of courts has been turned down in the past. But last week, as judges disposed of hundreds of cases, state and county officials said they believed the situation may be changing. President Reagan’s budget was being released in Washington, setting off a chain reaction through every level of government, involving scores of services, including what was happening in that Los Angeles County courtroom.

Written to meet Gramm-Rudman’s new deficit-reducing spending limits, the budget proposed billions in reductions in scores of national, state and local programs, including funds given to the states and local governments for everything from mass transit to health care.

For Los Angeles County, officials said, the Gramm-Rudman cuts--provided they are upheld by the Supreme Court after a lower court ruling Friday nullifying sections of the legislation--will worsen an already difficult fiscal situation. The cuts would hit as the county is being called on to care for an increasingly large, sometimes homeless, poor population and for jails and courts strained by high crime rates.

The President’s $994-billion budget would cut $24 billion from health care, education, housing, transportation and other domestic programs. An analysis prepared by an economic forecasting firm for the Service Employees International Union, the National Council of Senior Citizens and the Villers Foundation said California would lose $1.16 billion in federal aid under Gramm-Rudman’s requirements.

Some of the funds go directly to cities, counties and other local government agencies, such as the Southern California Rapid Transit District. Others are sent from Washington to Sacramento and then passed on to local government for welfare, administered by counties, or health care. Federal funds for health care for the poor--Medi-Cal, for example--find their way to county government and are used to pay for the operations of the huge county hospital system.

Cuts in these funds would come on top of such rising county expenditures as general relief, which is county-financed aid for the poorest residents; care for the homeless, and support of the increasingly overcrowded county jail.

Deukmejian’s proposed $36.7-billion 1986-87 budget promises continued “support for fiscal stability and independence for local government” and pledges backing of a ballot measure guaranteeing local governments money from motor vehicle license fees.

Aid for Rural Areas

But much of the governor’s budget message last month appeared to concentrate more on helping rural counties, such as those in the far northern part of the state or in the Central Valley that are suffering from high unemployment and low tax revenues. A major budget proposal was the Rural Renaissance Initiative “to assist basic industries develop new business and job opportunities and improve the quality of life for residents of rural counties.”

As a result, said Los Angeles Chief Administrative Officer James C. Hankla, Los Angeles, the state’s most populous county and the one with the largest share of urban problems, was neglected.

“The net impact of the governor’s proposal is to provide no new major fiscal relief to the county while potentially shifting approximately $14.8 million (to the county) in costs, primarily in the area of health services,” Hankla said. “In our discussions with the governor’s staff, they appear to recognize that counties have serious fiscal problems but are not in a position to assist us due to limited revenues and higher funding priorities.”

Hankla said the county’s best hope of getting more money would be passage of the legislation requiring the state to take over costs of the Superior and Municipal courts.

“I think that would take the county out of the woods,” he said. “If that money were available to us, we could manage our fiscal affairs.”

The proposal has been floated for several years, pushed by legislators such as Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) and by Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

State Responsibility

Frank S. Zolin, executive officer of the Los Angeles County Superior Court system, said backers of Robinson’s latest proposal contend that the courts are state, rather than local, agencies and should be financed by Sacramento.

He said that when California government was created in frontier days, counties were set up as arms of the state and given some state work to do, including running courts, jails and tending to the poor. But under that system, the state creates the criminal and civil laws that provide the courts’ work, Zolin said, and the counties, while paying the bills, have no control over the workload.

Robinson agreed: “Courts are a state responsibility. They should not be funded through the property tax.”

At present, counties pay for 90% of the court’s cost and the state 10%. California, Zolin said, ranks toward the bottom in providing state aid to the courts.

Under the proposal introduced by Robinson, a county could have the state take over financing of the courts in return for giving the state the fines and other court revenues that now wind up in local treasuries.

It would cost the state about $350 million a year, Zolin said.

The framework for the program was passed by the Legislature last year and signed by Deukmejian. But the governor decided to withhold money for the bill unless court procedures are changed.

Stand in Budget Message

He continued the stand in his new budget message, which states: “There is a need to implement significant reforms of the judicial process.”

Deukmejian insisted on:

- Setting of state policy to “reduce unnecessary court delays.”

- Administrative, rather than court, settlement of some traffic cases.

- Questioning of witnesses and prospective jurors by judges, rather than attorneys, in civil and some criminal cases.

- Reduction in the size of civil juries from 12 to 8.

- Use of tape recording in courts to replace the traditional court reporter and use of computers in preparing transcripts.

- Raising the limit for mandatory arbitration in Municipal Court civil cases from $25,000 to $50,000.

Robinson said he opposes questioning of witnesses and prospective jurors by judges.

While the procedure is followed in federal court, he said, there is no case law to guide state judges in such questioning.

“There would be litigation after litigation with cases tossed out because the judges asked the wrong question,” he said.

He also said organized court reporters, an influential Sacramento lobby, will make it difficult to institute tape recording of court proceedings. And he said the trial lawyers’ lobby, another Sacramento power, would probably oppose raising the arbitration limit.

“I want to keep the reforms to financial reforms,” he said.

Hankla said Deukmejian’s insistence on such major changes may kill the Robinson proposal.

“Based on past experience, it will be very difficult to obtain adoption of these reforms,” he said.

Hankla, however, said he is determined to push for the reforms, and he is expected to get strong backing from the Board of Supervisors, even though the conservative majority are Deukmejian supporters.

County budget problems, he said, are severe.

Salary increases and beginning operations at the new Olive View county hospital will raise county costs, as will possible increases in general relief, welfare and health aid. At the same time, elimination of federal revenue sharing, a longtime federal aid program for local government, and the Gramm-Rudman cuts could further reduce revenue.

The Reagan budget, for example, proposes cutting Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California) by $1.3 billion a year nationally. Hankla said this cut will be directly felt by the Los Angeles County hospital system, many of whose patients’ bills are paid by Medi-Cal. The Medi-Cal dollars received by the county for patient care are used to pay salaries of physicians, nurses and other hospital workers.

Hankla, in a message to the supervisors, also proposed other forms of state help to the county.

Among them are ending the requirement that counties provide matching funds for state programs for mental health, drug and alcohol abuse and welfare; increasing state aid for jail operations; the state’s paying a portion of general relief, and the state’s paying more for health care for indigents. And he said the state should pay counties money that local government claims is owed them in a long-term fiscal dispute between counties and the state over financing some programs.

But he said the county’s main effort will be to help win passage of the court-financing bill.

Lobbying for Bill

Hankla has started lobbying in Sacramento and has taken his fight to newspaper editorial boards, trying to sell his message of fiscal trouble in Los Angeles County.

As always, there is skepticism in Sacramento. “The belief here is that Los Angeles has not done too badly,” said one legislative aide. In this fight, the county has the assistance of the state’s judges, as well as elements of the Legislature’s Democratic leadership. Robinson said he believes the measure may become law this year. “I think the prospects are good even though a lot of people are not saying so in public,” he said.