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I also wanted to join the Chief Justice in thanking Judge Wachobe and Judge Macabe and
Judge Ellsworth and all of the members of the committee that either are here in person
or those who couldn't make it here today, and again I wanted to give you a personal
thanks because I can imagine the time and the energy and the dedication that you devoted
to that, and it's an inspiration to us in that regards.
As a side note, I wanted to thank the speakers that we heard from today and those who have
submitted written comments. If Anthony Pico is still here, if I were a lawyer, I would
be at your law school graduation signing you up as an associate, also.
I wanted also to take a moment to thank the Chief Justice for your dedication in helping
shape at this time a judicial branch capable of ensuring access to justice and serving
the public as our state struggles through this ongoing fiscal crisis, and also to your
dedication over your term to and your direction to E&P to tackle some of the difficult judicial
governance issues we've been talking about, and your support of executive planning in
that endeavor.
It's now the job of Executive and Planning to propose a process for consideration and
implementation of the recommendations that we have heard from the SEC report today.
I would though just like to note that while the SEC performed its important work, the
Judicial Council over these last 18 months has been making changes to governance, to
leadership and oversight, and that work will continue for projects the E&P had started,
and also for those that will be a part of the SEC recommendations.
When Jody Patel became interim Administrative Director four months ago the Chief Justice
directed her to fast track reorganization plans of the AOC. Under the leadership of
Jody Patel and interim chief deputy director Curt Soderlund, the AOC has reduced its size.
Additional plans for layoffs and other reorganization efforts are underway as we know.
I'm also pleased to see that several of these efforts are included in the SEC recommendations
that are in the report, and I believe in fact that we'll find out that at least later today
or tomorrow that about a third of those issues identified in the SEC Report had been discussed
and identified by Jody Patel and her team, and that they have all ready begun to
make steps to address them.
But, as the SEC report, there's still work to be done. As a result of the SEC Report
being provided to Executive and Planning by the Chief Justice and in the interest of transparency,
and really mindful of some of the impacts that we have heard about today with regards
to the SEC recommendations, Executive and Planning is going to recommend that as of
today, if it's approved by the Judicial Council, that the report be posted for public comment
for a period of 30 days.
In our executive an planning meeting where we discussed this, we heard from P.J.'s, from
court executives, from appellate justices, and from attorney groups that they wanted
to have that opportunity to publicly make comment and so we are going recommend that
those be collected, that once they are received, that they immediately be posted
on a public website, and then we will bring it back to council at our August meeting those
particular comments. I'll state more about what our actual recommendation in that regard
is.
We also understand the many branch-wide concerns involved in the SEC Report and the recommendations,
and therefore we are recommending that E&P take full responsibility for preserving the
integrity of the SEC Report and bringing back to the council recommendations with regards
to each of the SEC recommendations.
We also as we've heard today, appreciate the urgency of taking action in the current budget
environment.
We are also mindful that we are actively recruiting a new Administrative Director and one of our
recommendations will be that there be will an expectation that once that new director
is selected or if not, then the interim director will be charged with the responsibility for
implementing what we as a Judicial Council recommend with oversight from Executive and
Planning in a process I would like to review.
Our recommendation from Executive and Planning is going to be that as of today, we send it
out for a 30-day public comment period, that those public comments will be public and be
posted on the web page, that the report will be assigned to Executive and Planning for
our ownership and for our review and consideration of each recommendation,
that E&P will evaluate, prioritize each recommendation, and also determine if there is additional
information that E&P needs with respect to any of the
recommendations.
We are recommending that we not assign any of the recommendations to another group for
any further evaluation, but that if we have questions or concerns, we will ask people
to come to us and we will discuss those with them.
It may be RUPRO, the interim director, the new director, the Chief Justice, litigation
management, the construction committee, the Internal Committee for technology, whomever
it may be, but our intention is not to assign it to anybody, but to keep that to ourselves.
We'll ask the three SEC member who's are incoming new advisory members and a voting member on
the council to serve as liaisons to our committee, to help us in the prioritization, the timeline,
the evaluation, and the implementation of that.
Again, E&P has all ready scheduled an August 9th meeting, and at that time we will review
the public comments, we will prioritize the recommendations, we will create a timeline,
and we plan to report back to the council at its August meeting with regards to that.
We don't intend to wait until we have reviewed all 147 as we make progress through this them,
then we will report back on an interim basis at
the Judicial Council meetings.
And then lastly, we believe it will be the administrative director’s responsibility
to implement the recommendations to report back to the council and to Executive and Planning
and the council providing oversight along with our three SEC members who will remain
in that advisory committee for the implementation.
Chief Justice and Judicial Council members, that is the recommendation for the review
of the SEC Report from Executive and Planning.