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Before we hear public comment wanna say a few things about this historic report
and that is
as you know when i became Chief approximately eighteen months ago our
branch faced alarming budget cutbacks due to the fiscal crisis we
experienced some before but
at that time we didn't know how long it would go and we still don't really and
we didn't know it's bad
so at that point at the Judicial Council and the Administrative
Office of the Court's was also the subject of a great deal of criticism
during that transition
and those criticisms had to be addressed immediately
My goal from the outset was to establish a fresh approach to governance, one
that's based on, what we do here now that I believe, transparency accountability and
and oversight and self-assessment and communication
So, again, soon after I became Chief Justice, I surveyed the judges,
sorry Glenn County,
but that was a survey that I asked for them to tell me anonymously and if they
chose
what was wrong with
governance and what was wrong with how they perceive the Judicial Council doing
its
its job and whether or not there were any recommendations
and so I, like many of you,
I received the responses. I've read them. I shared them with the appropriate
committees.
And the next steps really started to form and that was—
we needed more
facts, as a council we needed more facts to proceed.
As far as the criticism of the AOC was concerned,
I needed
an objective body to study the agency
and a body that
understood
what we do and how we do it. Really it was
a dilemma whether to hire someone to do this or to use
our expertise and
as you know I fell on the side of expertise
evaluating the AOC.
And so in March 2011,
I appointed the Strategic Evaluation Committee in order to conduct an in-depth review
of the AOC
because I believed that I and the JC needed the report is a tool to how we would
move forward with
efficiency and transparency in what was clearly becoming diminishing resources.
The committee worked independently,
tirelessly without staff,
collected volumes of information reached out,
tried to contact every entities or person who wanted to contribute or
speak to this historic report.
And fifty five weeks later, in spite of their day jobs, they presented a final
report, approximately 150 recommendations to the council.
We're taking this report seriously, it's important, its our first self assessment of how
we
how we've operated and how we should move forward.
As you know uh... I appointed Judicial Council Judge Walcob and Judge
McCabe,
the Chair and Vice Chair of the SEC committee,
as well as Judge Cheryl Ellsworth, to ensure follow-up and to give us background
and to help us move forward
with this report and its recommendations.
In June, Council accepted the report
and thereafter we had public comment on the website. We've had two rounds of
deliberation i think that i can fairly say about the SEC that from the
survey
that from the public comment
but really a third now and that
the synthesis of those comments by E&P which we'll hear about today.
And before we begin hearing that and before we hear public comment
I again
want to thank several different groups. Of course, first, the SEC Committee for
the remarkable work that's
presented to us.
None of us will ever underestimate or forget what you've done for the court, the
branch, in surveying and bringing this information that helps us move forward.
I also want to thank E&P because I know
in your eleven meetings that you described yesterday
that probably nine of them were regarding the SEC in the synthesis of
the comments
and making sure that this could be presented to Council in a timely,
intelligent, coherent fashion that we could act on
I also want to thank
in addition, to Judge Wachob, Judge McCabe, Judge Ellsworth
someone who isn't here today, California Judges Association president David Ruben
for
having CJA participate in their own lengthy discussions and evaluations
of the SEC report
and also finally
to the AOC
employees that dedicated public servants
who responded to the survey,
who helped bring it forward with
ideas about how we can
uh... operate better
and more efficiently to serve the courts, to serve the public, to
serve the Judicial Council.
And i know that we have many challenges ahead of us but this is moving us in the
right direction and we will continue to move in the right direction with
uh... open-mindedness deliberation
and civility.