The trial courts of our state are in crisis. The problem is not simply lack of money. Budget shortfalls have hurt the courts, but poor management by the Judicial Council and the (AOC) has significantly contirbuted to catastrophic reductions. The Legislature enacts the annual budget for trial court operations, but gives oversight of the funds ot the Judicial Council and the AOC. However, the Judicial Council has historically not fully delivereed all of the money the Legislature has appropriated for the trial courts. And the AOC has been a bloated and impenetrable bureaucracy, which has lost its principal mission to serve the courts and has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars....The AOC has responded with unrestrained growth and spending, unstructured organizational decision-making, and a lack of transparency and accountability. ...
The high cost of courthouses designed and built through the AOC's office of Construction and Maintnance raises doubts about the AOC's ability to responsibly design and build courthouses with the needs of the commnity in mind. Excessive spending, exorbitant and unnecessary features, square footage and numbers-of courtrooms disproportionate to the populations served, and a lack of concern for taxpayer dollars, have all been demonstrated. ...
The 'poster child' example of AOC construction blundering may well be the much-needed Long Beach courthouse, still more than a year away from completion. This crucial project is in jeopardy because the AOC failed to plan adequately for its cost.What the judge is alluding to in his broadside against the AOC, among other things, is that the AOC selected a design-build-finance-operate-maintain (PPP) project delivery model for construction of the new Long Beach courthouse, despite somewhat higher financing costs. A key factor in the decision was a desire to preserve an existing construction fund that the Legislature had allocated for new construction of courts.
It is, of course, a common rationale offered up by PPP proponents that it allows construction of needed public facilities without public entities having to do the heavy political lifting to raise revenue. Private financing can be paid for with operating revenues from assets like toll bridges, toll roads, or in this case the lease of a mixed use court facility. In the case of the Long Beach courthouse, it appears the AOC anticipated funding would come in part from annual California Legislature appropriations for lease payments . There may have been winks and nods under the Schwartzenegger adminstration (big fans of PPP). But different winds may be blowing now.
In 2007, the legislature authoried the AOC to investigate PPP's, and Gov. Code 70391.5 specifically authorized a PPP form of Contract for Long Beach Courthouse. The definitive Project Agreement for the courthouse was signed at the tail end of the Schwartzenegger adminstration in December 2010. Design started promptly in January of 2011, and construction proceeded on a fast pace, with steel erection taking place in January 2012, estimated to be a full year ahead of a normal design-bid-build schedule.
Initial lease payments on the 35 year agreement fall due upon the state taking possession of the completed facility, currently scheduled for the fall of 2013. However, it now appearsthat anticipated funds from the Legislature may not be forthcoming. Earlier this month the Senate Budget Committee Chairman of the newly dominant Democratic Legislature told judiciary leaders not to count on any money coming from the overburdened general fund. The AOC should instead rely on an internal judiciary construction fund. This "internal fund", however, was slated to construct 23 other needed court projects throughout the State. Now it looks like this money may not be available. OOPS!
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