If it wasn’t already obvious…..

Imagine producing a flash mob of 500 court employees and members of the public with forty thousand watts of music power pulling up on two semi-tractor trailers in civic center plaza facing the supreme court building at lunch time on a spring weekday to send this message exactly as delivered below. Every media outlet in the world would show up if they knew about it thus bringing an insurmountable amount of pressure on both Sacramento and San Francisco to get their act together.

At this point, it appears it’s going to take this kind of effort to be heard.

In the meantime, we’re going to let the maximum security inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) send the message for us….

As we’ve pointed out many times, our Chief Justice is beyond naive. The fact of the matter is about 2,500 court employees have lost their jobs while she has chosen to punish the public as a way to get more funding. Let’s think about the politics of the situation for a second….

Hundreds of contractors, vendors and construction unions band together every year in Sacramento to lobby the legislature to approve court construction projects.

The money is approved and the Judicial Council builds another building that they cannot afford to operate. Heck, they can’t afford to operate the ones they have now so over eighty of them have shut down.

What if our brilliant Chief Justice had just killed all of those construction projects and directed all of the funding to keeping those 2,500 court employees employed and those eighty courthouses open by taking a big chunk out of judicial council budget?

Those hundreds of contractors, vendors and construction unions would have banded together to ensure adequate judicial branch funding so that their projects could move forward. Unlike courts and court employees, these lobbyists have some serious juice because they put politicians into office through generous donations and advocacy.

Instead, she pisses in the wheaties of the legislature and feigns leadership with a three year plan – and no chance at all of moving the ball down the field because behind the scenes, her mismanagement of the branch is a joke in Sacramento.

I’d really like to put the onus upon the judicial council or AOC management for these problems but facts matter and the facts are that she handpicked every sitting council member, less the ones picked by the bar and legislators. She is the person ultimately responsible for what they produce with respect to the speak with one voice mantra.

What she has managed to produce is a punishing SEC report that she has only partially implemented in the past two years. She has witnessed over 2,500 people lose their jobs and over eighty courthouses close without publicly being the slightest bit remorseful about it.

That’s because making the public and courts feel the pain is her only plan.

Much like the three rural counties that are reaching out to tap emergency reserves, right after kicking them to the curb she has the audacity to make statements like:

“This is exactly the reason why Judicial Council is a statewide policy-making body and that we are not built and structured like the Legislature with representatives who come from districts. . . . It is essential that the branch speak unified [sic] about funding the judiciary as a branch.”

Translation: Things are tough all over. You need to cut your hours of operations and your employees so that you can speak unified with my flawed plan. Yes, I have the money you need but you can’t have it because I have fiscal year-end goals to spend that money padding the judicial council nest as opposed to spending it in places where it is needed, like your court.

After all, they are branch reserves, ergo Judicial Council reserves, not trial court reserves.

Even governor moonbeam indicated she should be doing something other than shutting down courthouses and laying off employees which was a hint akin to batting someone upside the head with a two-by-four but she just doesn’t understand the game.

Unfortunately all the courthouses will be under construction soon so she’s about to forfeit the only good hand she has. You would think a blackjack dealer would be able to read the tell…..