The California Strategic Growth Plan
Judicial

The Trial Court Facilities Act of 2002 provided for the transfer of local court facilities to the state to ensure consistency in the provision of justice and to ensure that facilities are managed in a way that provides safe and secure courts. Since that time, the Judicial Branch has worked to complete the transfers and to create an organization that will be responsible for the design, construction and operation of a unified statewide court system. As of July 2007, the Judicial Council had completed 120 court facility transfers from 31 counties. The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is working with the Legislature to extend the deadline to transfer court facilities to the state through December 2009. This would enable the AOC to work with the counties to transfer approximately 180 additional court facilities over the next year, with the remaining facilities estimated to transfer to the state by December 2009.

The state's court system is supported by a substantial infrastructure inventory, including 451 trial court facilities, 11 appellate court facilities and 3 Supreme Court facilities. A significant number of these facilities do not meet current guidelines for efficient and safe court environments and, overall, the facilities are overcrowded with no capacity to handle growth in judicial workload. The AOC estimates that $9.6 billion is needed to bring all the courts up to secure and safe standards and accommodate growth. It is proposed that $2 billion of new general obligation bonds be provided to address these infrastructure issues. While this amount will not fund all facility needs identified by the AOC, it will provide immediate funding to handle the most critical infrastructure issues over the next ten years. In addition, this funding will enable the courts to leverage private funding through public-private partnerships. These partnerships might include (but not be limited to) arrangements such as:

  • Exchanging outdated and inefficient court facilities located on valuable urban property for new court facilities on less prominently-located property.
  • Co-locating revenue-generating commercial space (e.g., law offices) in newly constructed court buildings.
  • As demonstrated in Canada, the UK and elsewhere, design-build-operate contracts in which the private sector constructs and operates a court building in exchange for lease payments.
With an asset inventory as large as the court system's, there are very likely many opportunities for successful partnerships that would increase the resources available to the court system for its facility needs. Because of the formative nature of the court system's public-private partnership efforts, it is difficult to estimate the amount of resources that will be leveraged.

In addition, the court system receives about $125 million per year from certain fine and fee revenues that are dedicated to addressing facility needs. The ongoing nature of this revenue stream will continue to be an important part of the court system's multiple funding approach to addressing its infrastructure needs.
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CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS for The California Strategic Growth Plan Back to Top

 Strategic Growth Coordination and Sustainability
 Providing Performance Based Infrastructure (PBI)
 Flood Control and Water Supply
 K-12 Education
 Higher Education
 Transportation
image of black pointing arrowJudicial
 Housing
 Public Safety
 Other Public Service
 Accountability
 Affordability
PRINTABLE BUDGET DOCUMENTS Back to Top
Budget Summary - The California Strategic Growth Plan (pdf * - 279K) -
Provides this entire The California Strategic Growth Plan Chapter in pdf format.