Walters - Calderon, Cantil-Sakauye Flap Delays California Courts Bill
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Dan Walters-
Women’s groups and Democrat Calderon’s female colleagues fired bullets at allusion to Cantil-Sakauye while talking about a court management bill he was carrying.
“It isn’t ‘Is she nice?' ‘Cause she is,” Calderon said in May. “‘Is she smart?’ ‘Cause she is. ‘Is she attractive?’ ‘Cause she is. It isn’t about that.”
The media paid a lot of attention to the barbs, especially when Cantil-Sakauye told an interviewer that she was “troubled” by the remark in conjunction with “a very serious hearing.”
“That’s when that answer is unresponsive,” she said, “and is offensive and is not at all responsive to the question.”
Outside the legal press, however, media have given little notice to the bill itself, the focal point of a very bitter battle that pits Cantil-Sakauye against a band of rebel judges called the Alliance of California Judges.
As both houses of the Legislature moved hundreds of bills last month to meet deadlines, one of the measures left behind was Calderon’s Assembly Bill 1208, which would give local judges more authority over how their courts are managed, including finances, and therefore would take some authority from the Judicial Council, which the chief justice chairs.
A basic tenet of Capitol politics is that a legislator moves a bill when it has the votes, so one must assume that his contentious measure that would change how the court system is managed doesn't have the votes.
That makes it a tactical win for the judicial establishment and Cantil-Sakauye and may stem from those tone-deaf remarks Calderon made during a committee hearing. The Assembly’s Democratic leadership, which had supported Calderon, backed away after the uproar erupted.
When the state assumed financial responsibility for the courts, it made them – like schools, prisons and welfare programs – another player in the annual budget game.
The dissidents contend that the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts have spent too much of very limited court funds on a bloated bureaucracy in San Francisco and an unworkable statewide computer system while forcing local courts to reduce operations. AB 1208 aims at curbing the diversions.
The rebel judges’ ire was concentrated on Cantil-Sakauye’s predecessor, Ron George, and his now-retired court administrator, William Vickery, but she inherited the issue and was plunged into the judicial civil war.
Although AB 1208 is in limbo, the war is continuing, even escalating. The just-enacted 2011-12 state budget whacks another $350 million from the courts. Cantil-Sakauye and rebel judges are already jousting over how the fiscal pain will be distributed.
E-mail Dan Walters at [email protected] Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.[[In-content Ad]]
Women’s groups and Democrat Calderon’s female colleagues fired bullets at allusion to Cantil-Sakauye while talking about a court management bill he was carrying.
“It isn’t ‘Is she nice?' ‘Cause she is,” Calderon said in May. “‘Is she smart?’ ‘Cause she is. ‘Is she attractive?’ ‘Cause she is. It isn’t about that.”
The media paid a lot of attention to the barbs, especially when Cantil-Sakauye told an interviewer that she was “troubled” by the remark in conjunction with “a very serious hearing.”
“That’s when that answer is unresponsive,” she said, “and is offensive and is not at all responsive to the question.”
Outside the legal press, however, media have given little notice to the bill itself, the focal point of a very bitter battle that pits Cantil-Sakauye against a band of rebel judges called the Alliance of California Judges.
As both houses of the Legislature moved hundreds of bills last month to meet deadlines, one of the measures left behind was Calderon’s Assembly Bill 1208, which would give local judges more authority over how their courts are managed, including finances, and therefore would take some authority from the Judicial Council, which the chief justice chairs.
A basic tenet of Capitol politics is that a legislator moves a bill when it has the votes, so one must assume that his contentious measure that would change how the court system is managed doesn't have the votes.
That makes it a tactical win for the judicial establishment and Cantil-Sakauye and may stem from those tone-deaf remarks Calderon made during a committee hearing. The Assembly’s Democratic leadership, which had supported Calderon, backed away after the uproar erupted.
When the state assumed financial responsibility for the courts, it made them – like schools, prisons and welfare programs – another player in the annual budget game.
The dissidents contend that the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts have spent too much of very limited court funds on a bloated bureaucracy in San Francisco and an unworkable statewide computer system while forcing local courts to reduce operations. AB 1208 aims at curbing the diversions.
The rebel judges’ ire was concentrated on Cantil-Sakauye’s predecessor, Ron George, and his now-retired court administrator, William Vickery, but she inherited the issue and was plunged into the judicial civil war.
Although AB 1208 is in limbo, the war is continuing, even escalating. The just-enacted 2011-12 state budget whacks another $350 million from the courts. Cantil-Sakauye and rebel judges are already jousting over how the fiscal pain will be distributed.
E-mail Dan Walters at [email protected] Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.[[In-content Ad]]
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