Judicial tyranny, the voter and taxpayer be damned

Courts quash cuts, add to state's budget woes
Marisa Lagos,
Sacramento - -- Courts in recent years have crushed attempts by California to cut spending by billions of dollars and have forced the state to spend hundreds of millions more than planned.
Designated cuts to health and human services that were rejected by federal courts alone have resulted in $4.5 billion in lost savings over the past three years, according to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration.
Prison health care costs have doubled to more than $1.9 billion since 2006, when a federal judge ordered a federal receiver to take control of prison health services.
"The judicial branch is now a full player in the budget because the decisions they are making have an impact on what the governor and Legislature can or cannot do," said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the Department of Finance. "The judiciary does not have to deal with the fiscal consequence of the rulings - they say you can't do a spending reduction, but we have to come up with another $100 million in cuts somewhere else."
This year, the Republican governor is blaming the courts for some of the most controversial cuts contained in his budget proposal for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. He says judges' mandates left him no option but to propose the wholesale elimination of programs, including welfare.
The governor is also seeking relief from the nation's highest court. On May 13, Schwarzenegger announced that 22 states joined California to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review court decisions that blocked states from reducing public services. The states want a ruling barring suits by private parties against cuts to programs that are funded jointly by the state and federal government.
Among the court cases California lost this year is one in which federal judges blocked the planned reduction of Adult Day Health Care services, a Medi-Cal program that provides nearly 37,000 elderly and mentally infirm Californians with daytime care and supervision. Schwarzenegger wanted to reduce eligibility and limit the number of days the program is provided to save the state more than $35 million over three years.
Some of the groups that filed the lawsuits said they had no choice because elected officials failed to do their jobs or took actions that were blatantly illegal.
Change needed
State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento - who supported an unsuccessful suit to fight Schwarzenegger's line-item veto cuts last year - said the "myriad of lawsuits speak to how desperately this structure of government needs to be changed."
"The things we can do under this broken system are stitches and Band-Aids, and that's why this year we're out of those options," Steinberg said. "The (court orders affecting prisons) are symptomatic of a larger problem - the desire for more but an unwillingness to confront the costs of providing more."
The problem won't be going away any time soon, even if reforms to the budget process are made.
Numerous court cases are still pending, including more than two dozen lawsuits challenging Schwarzenegger's furloughs of more than 200,000 state workers. Those cases threaten to punch even bigger holes in the state budget in the future. In the furlough case, a judge has warned that the workers might be entitled to back pay.
On Thursday, school districts and parents announced a lawsuit against the state arguing that elected officials have failed in their constitutional obligation to adequately fund public schools. The suit could take years to adjudicate, but if successful, could completely change how much money California must pump into public education. Longtime observers say there's nothing new about the budget being carved up by lawsuits. Court challenges tend to increase during tough budget times, said Santa Clara University law school Professor Gerald Uelmen.
"I don't think this is a new phenomenon - budget cuts frequently result in lawsuits," he said.
Some suits necessary
Some suits are necessary because there's a lack of political will to pour funding into certain areas, said Jeanne Woodford, a former director of the California Department of Corrections who worked for the department for more than 25 years. She said that a number of lawsuits filed by the nonprofit Prison Law Office on behalf of California inmates have resulted in necessary reforms, including the federal receivership overseeing health care and the oversight of mental health and dental programs.
The receivership was created in 2006 after a judge ruled that inadequate care was causing the premature deaths of about 50 inmates a year. "Sometimes it really takes a lawsuit to make things happen, for a variety of reasons, the primary one being it's not politically correct to spend money on prisons," said Woodford.
Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Center, said state prison officials agreed that changes made as a result of one suit were "helpful and necessary" and would not have happened without a court order.