Marin Superior Court Pools Remaining Officials Not Affected by Layoffs

Posted in: Court Reporter News

UPDATE 3-17-10: Please click on the comments section to read the comments posted by Brandy Carrier who is currently an official in Marin County Superior Court.

——————————–

After issuing layoffs last month for court staff which included four official reporters, Marin Superior Court administration struck out again against officials when it sent a letter to the remaining officials informing them that as of March 15th, 2010, they would no longer be directly assigned to a judge as has been the past custom and practice.

Instead, the new letter informed the officials they would all be separated from their judges and assigned to a new pool of reporters.

The following is taken from the letter by Marin County Executive Director Kim Turner to the officials in Marin Superior explaining the court’s reasoning for putting officials into a pool system.

On March 15, 2010, the Court will implement a pooling system for the assignment of court reporters. Pooling has been proven to be a cost effective way to manage court reporting resources and to contain costs. While this will be a significant change for the Court and for all reporters, it is, without question, an effective fiscal strategy, given our recent budget constraints. Many courts that have changed from direct assignment to pooling have seen significant cost savings and have been better able to ensure that all reporters have the opportunity for transcript work and varied assignments.

Additionally, the Marin Superior Court administration encourages attorneys and parties to hire a freelance reporter in court proceedings for which a staff official reporter is not available due to their reassignment under the new system. Many courtrooms will not be staffed by officials at all.

We want officials to know that Marin Superior may not be acting out of a vacuum, as COCRA has been aware for some time now that various superior court administrators and personnel have been consulting each other asking about what courts are not mandated by law to be staffed.

It is our understanding that SEIU is currently working on responding to the recent decision to lay off officials and the court’s decision to pool its officials. We will keep you apprised of any further updates.

If you would like to read the letter that Marin County Executive Director Kim Turner sent to the officials announcing the pooling system, you may do so by clicking here to download the document or click on “Read the rest of this entry” link below to read the text of the letter embedded in this blog post.

Superior Court of California
County of Marin

MEMORANDUM

TO: Court Reporters
FROM: Kim Turner
DATE: March 10, 2010
SUBJECT: Court Reporter Pooling System – Effective March 15, 2010

Please be advised that the Court will be changing its policies and procedures regarding the assignment of court reporters. For many years, most reporters have had a fixed, primary assignment to a particular judicial officer or department, while occasionally being asked to report in other departments. Our experience with this system has shown it to be inequitable, in that some reporters have heavy courtroom assignments with significant transcript work while other reporters have few opportunities for transcript work and substantial down time.  Moreover, it is not the most efficient and cost effective way to cover our courtroom assignments and makes it difficult for the Court Reporter Coordinator to ensure that every reporter is called on to provide assistance fairly and equitably.

With the current reduction in the number of staff reporters, we know that there may be times when it is difficult to cover all assignments in which a reporter is required or requested. Please be advised that the Court will always provide reporters in those case types that are required by California law (felonies, juvenile and LPS, etc.) California Rule of Court 2.956 gives broad discretion to the trial courts to determine how and whether court reporting services will be provided by the Court in all other matters. This rule makes clear that courts may, upon notice and publication of a local policy, establish procedures to ensure that unlimited civil (including family law and probate) parties or their counsel give the Court ample notice when a reporter will be requested for a hearing or trial so the Court may determine whether a staff reporter can be provided or the parties will be advised to provide their own reporter. Please note that the Court will always try to assign a staff reporter first to these assignments, if one is available. However, if all available reporters are otherwise already assigned, parties may be advised that they will have to provide their own reporters for these proceedings.

Historically, the Court has provided reporters on many calendars where the court minutes are typically sufficient to record what happened on the calendar. In surveying other courts, we have learned that a significant number of them do not provide reporters for some calendars, other than those expressly required by statute. In the coming days, we will finalize a list of appearance types for which the judges have determined that reporters need not be present, unless a judge requests an exception from the Court Reporter Coordinator. Some of these appearance types include case management conferences, status reports and OSC hearings. A complete list will be made available once it is finalized.

POOLING SYSTEM

On March 15, 2010, the Court will implement a pooling system for the assignment of court reporters. Pooling has been proven to be a cost effective way to manage court reporting resources and to contain costs. While this will be a significant change for the Court and for all reporters, it is, without question, an effective fiscal strategy, given our recent budget constraints. Many courts that have changed from direct assignment to pooling have seen significant cost savings and have been better able to ensure that all reporters have the opportunity for transcript work and varied assignments.

Below is a description of how the system will work. It is based on several underlying assumptions and goals, including:

Two primary goals of pooling will be: a) to distribute the courtroom and transcript workload more equitably among reporters and b) to make better use of all reporters so that their out-of-court time is minimized.

Because of the physical design of the Hall of Justice, court reporters will continue to occupy the ante-rooms adjacent to judicial chambers, even though they will not be directly assigned to those judicial officers.

Courtroom clerks will assume responsibility for answering departmental phone lines and responding to messages left on them.

The Court may adopt local rules (effective July 1, 2010) to ensure that attorneys and the public are placed on notice that they must confirm the availability of a staff court reporter for unlimited civil, family law and probate matters prior to the date of hearing or trial. If a staff reporter is not available, the parties may be required to provide their own reporters.

Court transcript work will never be a valid reason to decline taking an assignment from the Court Reporter Coordinator. Reporters with time-sensitive transcripts must complete this work on their own time if they are needed to cover a court assignment. If not needed for court assignments, reporters are free to work on transcripts during their down time, as in the past.

The pooling system will be implemented as follows:

Reporters will be assigned to work units and will continue with the current procedure of requesting time off through the Court Reporter Coordinator. Only one reporter will be granted time off at a time by the Coordinator (although there may be some previously approved vacations that will be honored.) Requests for time off by a second or subsequent reporter must be approved by ACEO Cheri Brannon.

Electronic recording equipment is already installed in all courtrooms to provide maximum flexibility when courtrooms are used for proceedings for which ER is permitted by law, pursuant to Government Code section 69957 (e.g. all misdemeanor proceedings including court and jury trials, limited civil proceedings and infractions.)

All courtroom clerks are being trained to operate ER equipment and are being instructed in how to annotate the recordings in trials to make it easy to find testimony for read-back.

Courtrooms will be segregated into two units based on their proximity to each other (courtrooms A – E and F – O.) Five staff court reporters will be assigned to each unit.

Departments will contact the Court Reporter Coordinator when a reporter is needed and she will assign a reporter from the corresponding work unit to the courtroom. For example, if Department C needs a reporter, one of the five reporters in that work unit will be contacted to take the assignment. The assignment priority system will be published ahead of time so that all reporters know whether they will be first, second, third, fourth or fifth in the rotation. The rotation order will be changed regularly. If no reporters are available in a work unit, a reporter from the other work unit will be assigned or, as a last resort, the services of a pro tem reporter will be retained.

For the sake of consistency and to minimize confusion, the Coordinator will make every effort to have the same reporter assigned for the entire duration of a trial, whenever possible.

Thank you very much for your cooperation and suggestions as we implement this new system. After we have been using it for a short time, we will meet again to hear whether you have refinements or recommendations for how we can make it work more efficiently. The Coordinator will also maintain data on your assignments so we can review whether we are achieving our goals of equalizing the workload and saving money.

1. Brandy Carrier
   March 17th, 2010 at 10:57 pm

   We only have 10 reporters left… the three reporters in the top three positions would never strike… they still feel “loyal”… if the administrator can get away with laying off all of the reporters except for the felony and juvenile departments she only needs five reporters to operate the whole courthouse… she would LOVE a reason to “lay off” the six who would strike… and she would gladly use the ER to fill our spots… so we’re waiting for the answer from the writ of mandate that our union has filed for us… in essence, the writ says that she has created an “unavailability” of reporters by laying them off and then installing the ER… let’s hope we win this one!!!