Changes that require an investment will be less likely with spending cuts
By Brian Melley
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two days a month, Judge James Mize dials back the drama, anger and misery he usually sees in his family law courtroom to help couples complete simple divorces so they can get on with their lives.
The One Day Divorce program he pioneered in Sacramento at a time of severe budget cuts was a simple step to make the sometimes maddening, often intimidating and frequently confounding court process a bit easier.
“The paper maze ... is so complicated, so time consuming and so esoteric that the parties often would give up,” Mize said. “We figured there must be a better way.”
Mize is among several judges and court administrators who managed to pave a straighter path through the justice system even as $1 billion was slashed from the courts budget during the recession.
Layoffs sapped employee morale, 52 courthouses closed across the state and the trying experience of going to court has become more tedious with longer lines, frustrating hearing delays and time-consuming waits on the phone.
Against that backdrop, recent innovations seem like baby steps, but they have made it simpler to serve jury duty, pay traffic fines or get a restraining order in some counties. Lawyers in some courts can now schedule hearings online, file motions over the web and get judge’s orders electronically before they leave court.
Some of the improvements could be replicated as courts seek ways to be more efficient to compensate for a lack of funding, said Martin Hoshino, administrative director for the Judicial Council, which runs the court system.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed a $3.7 billion court budget — boosting funding $180 million from the current year — but that still falls short of the $1.2 billion the Judicial Council said it needed last year for the next three years.
Courts were finding ways to improve service and save money before the recession, said Fresno Superior Court Judge W. Kent Hamlin, a member of a large group of judges critical of the state courts administration.
“True innovations allowed the courts to provide better service to the public at less cost,” he said. “Things like shutting down a courthouse in Coalinga and leaving people with the limited option of appearing by video on their traffic case is an example of the court being forced by budget cuts to do less for the public ... to soften the blow by means of teleconferencing.”
If the wheels of justice turn slowly, changes can move at a crawl for an institution still using outdated technology and customs that seem to have changed little since judges abandoned their wigs.
Yolo County Superior Court CEO Shawn Landry confronts the weight of tradition when he challenges his staff — reduced about 20 percent — to look for efficiencies as they eye a day when courts go paperless.
“I always say to my staff, don’t say, ‘Because we’ve always done it this way,’” he said.
His court recently created a uniform search warrant and allowed police to email applications to judges and get approval over the phone. That spares an officer precious time driving to a judge’s house in the middle of the night to get a warrant even as evidence may be vanishing, such as the blood-alcohol level of a suspected drunken driver.
Yolo County also installed computerized kiosks that read bar codes on jury summons, allowing jurors to check in for duty and update any personal information, such as an address change. The $80,000 investment saved the time it took two employees to input the information, freeing them to do other work. He estimates savings of about $130,000 a year.
Changes that require an investment, however, will be less likely under new spending restrictions that prevent courts from carrying over more than 1 percent of savings from the previous year. Those savings funded some improvements
“It stifles innovation and we’re not able to create programs like the jury kiosk,” Landry said.
That could be pivotal as courts try to upgrade computers that still run on the disk operating system, better known as DOS, dating back to the 1990s. In Los Angeles, efforts are underway to streamline 20 different case management systems.
Mize created the One Day Divorce program without additional spending by relying on retired judges, law students and lawyers to volunteer every other Friday to make sure participants have papers in order before they set foot in his court.
Alyssa Reyes, 26, a pharmacy technician, was nervous when she arrived at court at 9 a.m. on Jan. 23. She had been working her way through the divorce process for about six months, but found the paperwork confounding before learning about the free program for low-income people.
With help, she completed her papers by noon and after a few minutes before the judge, her marriage of nearly six years was over and the additional stress from the process was gone.
“It was pretty hectic at first,” she said. “It was a relief that everything is over and done with.”
Mize said the program, which was copied in San Diego, has probably not produced a measurable savings, but has cut down on filing paperwork and has allowed participants to easily complete divorces that would have taken months in the past, if not years.
He gets a thrill every time someone yelps with joy when he grants a divorce, but chafes when people suggest courts shouldn’t be making divorce easier. By the time someone sets foot in court, he said, the marriage is over. He hopes to make the process even faster.
“Someday we’re going to have to call this one-hour divorce,” he jokes.
