California Closes Courts, Lays Off Workers

If the situation in the state of California seems, to you, to be going down a very long road to a very bad place, then the news that you are about to read will do nothing to contradict that impression. The state made an announcement this week that they will be making massive job cuts to their court system. These cuts will impact the system in major ways. It is expected to result in the closure of about 56 courtrooms.

The cuts, which are slated to impact many courts in the city of LA, as well as courts in Pasadena, Pomona, Alhambra, Norwalk, and Whittier. All of these cuts are part of a $30 million set of cuts that the courts have to make in order to meet their newly reduced budget. The courts, which hear about five million filings each and every year, will have cuts to all kinds of courts, from criminal cases to the civil courts in the state.

The courts are cutting about 100 jobs in order to make this plan work. There will also no longer be court reporters for civil cases. Currently the courts in the state of California employ about 5,400 civilian workers, so the cuts are not impacting as large of a number of workers as they could be. The closure may mean that cases will have a significant delay.

These are not, by far, the only cuts made to the state of California. They have been making massive budget cuts in many areas in order to deal with a budget that is drastically shrinking.  Earlier in this month the state issues layoff notices to their civil servants that will compound the slowdown of California public services. For those of you who have missed out on our earlier coverage of layoffs in LA here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all:

“As more money woes pile up in the state of California it looks like one of the biggest cities in the state will be getting ready to get rid of its staff in a bid to make ends meet. The city in question is Los Angeles and the layoffs are at this point largely undefined. We only know that they are coming because of a statement recently made by Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles.

At a recent event, originally reported on by a reporter for the LA times blog the major said the following about the layoffs that he hopes to make a part of the budget for the city by the fast approaching end of the month. He said, “We’re going to lay off a large number of employees. I’m not going to say how many.” He then continued on to say that, “I’ve said to our employees either we get it through the City Council … or I’m going to put an initiative on the ballot the way they’ve done in San Jose, the way they’ve already done in San Diego and the way they’re gonna do in cities around the country.”

That news is less than encouraging for city workers, who are already dealing with union negotiations that may result in pay freezes and other contractual changes that will shift the burden of some of their costs to the workers instead of the city paying. Hopefully these changes to the contract, should the negotiations go well, will save some of the jobs that are on the chopping block.”