SACRAMENTO — In November, the Alliance of California Judges issued a critical press release warning that the chief justice-appointed Futures Commission was pondering big changes that would shift trial courts’ personnel duties to the Judicial Council. Appellate Justice James Humes, a member of the commission’s executive committee, said then that everyone should just take a deep breath, that commission members were just spitballing some ideas, not forwarding proposals.
Two months later, it looks like the commission is doing more than just chatting. The panel is holding a public hearing on Feb. 8 and 9 to discuss a number of “concepts.” Among them: centralizing the trial courts’ administrative services and shifting court-based employee bargaining to a regional or statewide system.
