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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the famed Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma county is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, how you doing everybody? Welcome to another edition of Sonoma County in the nineties. Gonna meet a new guest tonight, A person who has never visited before. It's Tressa Kintner and she's our Superior Court Administrator and it's the first time

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she's visiting with us and I'm really glad you could take the time to come over. Nice to have you here before we start talking to you about your job as the Superior Court administrator. Have a little background about, okay, well I was born in san Francisco.

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So I'm a native Californian and I've lived all over the central and northern part of the state or I guess the central northern part of the state from san Francisco down as far south as long beach and I went to school. Obviously in California schools graduated

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from the university of California at santa cruz. I went to work for the welfare department after that and while I was there I got a job with the social services department and my M. B. A. Along the way. And so I've been working government for about

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17 years, married married, one child husband in commercial real estate. Oh great. Alright. To your profession professional capacity. What is the role of the court? Executive officer of the court? Executive officer is responsible for making sure that all the administrative functions of the court go smoothly

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that all the paper flows through. That we know the impact of all any new laws and ledges, elation that the staff are hired and in their places and trained to do what they need to do. Just all of the everyday sorts of things that go on

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there. I'm also responsible for all the layers on with various other government agencies that the court deals with because the judges are increasingly in court. So I spend my time making sure that everything that needs to happen with other places goes well why you're explaining partly

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why but why is this job so important? Well without the behind the scenes work, the judges and the lawyers and all the people that were in court couldn't do what they, they are supposed to do. They would be bogged down by making sure they had money

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to pay the bills that the chairs all worked that they knew the impact of legislation. There are literally hundreds and thousands of bills that come out each year that need to be reviewed and analyze new regulations come out, All that sort of thing. That if they

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spent their time doing that, they wouldn't be able to conduct trials and yeah, it seemed to me in the past before, before we had this position, administrator or executive officer, the judges were really hassled a great deal. Like we're probably trying to do the things you're

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talking about budgeting and making sure the equipment needs were fulfilled and the personnel needs and it's very, very difficult to try to conduct your office in that fashion and also be a judge or a jurist. Right. I mean, you you simply couldn't do it. I don't

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know how they did it before you. People came there. You don't know either wrong. Alright. Um do you have a role in assisting the judges in managing their workload in the sense that as I've said, the administrative functions have to work smoothly. But also I will

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look around for things that are maybe working in other courts or analyze the system and suggest ideas for things that they might try bring them information, review information that comes in, suggest policies that might help the cases move more more smoothly. Work with the clerk of

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the court to see that their office is working in tandem with with the courts. Superior Court is the so called, you might call it the higher Court Municipal Court Lower Court Higher Court. Uh the type of offense that you hear in trial there is greater is

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more severe. The amount of money for civil suits is is quite a bit higher and that sort of thing. Are they backlog pretty badly right now. Not not too badly and there's the, the workload is increasing a lot of pressure on the, on the courts to

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move cases along. This court is one of the so called voluntary trial court delay reduction courts in that um developed has developed a program to specifically moved civil cases more quickly and we've seen a great reduction in the amount of time is taking to get civil

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cases through the court. The court is well implemented a system last january that's helping to move criminal cases through the court. And then of course we have proposition 1 15 coming down the line, what what would you pinpoint as being the key to being successful as

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a court administrator? I think probably being able to work with each of the judges who has to be by virtue of being a judge has to be independent in his or her decision making and the way they handle what they do and picking out the common

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threads and finding out what they all need and how, how to meet the individual needs as well as the group needs? How many judges do you have nine judges and one commissioner. So that's 10 people that you have to deal with one on one as you

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say to determine their individual needs is that that is a job and a half. Okay. You talked about your schooling at U. C. Santa cruz. But what prepared you basically for the present position? I've been in administration and management in government in criminal justice for probably

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about 10 years and I work primarily in the district Attorney's office. So I've almost on the user's side of the court. I've also for the last 6.5 years I managed the family support division of the District Attorney's office in santa Clara County. So I learned a

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lot of political skills and a lot of diplomacy, press relations people relations working with the budget office and the county administrator's office working for an elected official is a little bit different than working for a non elected officials. So that gave me a flavor of what

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it would be like working for judges. Although the judges are a separate branch of government so have even much more independence than other parts of county government. Well now the Superior Court Judge all the judges run for reelection. Your your judges serve six year terms, is

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that correct? And then after I've said this before on other programs, I always thought that that was fundamentally wrong. I'm not sure why. But it just doesn't seem to me that sitting up there and administrating administering if you will justice coincides with having to run for

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political office. How do the judges feel about that in general Do you think? I don't I don't really know. I would imagine that given their wide spectrum of views that you would probably run the gamut of opinions about. Yeah, I've heard both the pros and cons

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of this. Well judges shouldn't be appointed and then they'd serve whatever length of time and somebody said no, they become insulated and you have to be answerable to the public. But I don't know. I just always felt that the Superintendent of Schools, the County Superior Court

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Judges should not really be involved in the electric process. There are others who disagree with me, but that's what I have to think about it. I understand that the courts are unique in the structure of county government in general. Certainly Superior Court is but would you

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explain to the audience why? Well, the judiciary, the judiciary is a separate branch of government. You have the executive branch, which would essentially be your boss, supervisors governor, the president and then you have the legislative branch which of course are the all the elected representatives and

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the courts are a third branch. And really the court is the key to our democracy. If you look at other types of forms of government, you will see that the court has protected protected individual rights and minority rights for many, many years. So that really places

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it in a different position. We do not uh follow the dictates of the board of supervisor. We have special authorities, all of our own. We the court obviously has the right to order certain things that would to meet their needs. We do have to work with

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the board on our budget issues. And the judges are all state state employees as a post county employees. They are that that's, you know, when they say the Superior Court, they say the Superior Court as a separate entity of Sonoma County or of some other county.

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It is a state organization, isn't it, basically? But it serves in in the various counties. Is there a Superior Court of every county? Yes, but they're actually the Superior Court of the state of California in Sonoma County. That's where I used to hear that on one

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of the TV programs, the Superior Court of the state of California in and for the county of such and such. So that does put them in a completely different brackets. Are they funded by the state primarily or not? About 50% of the courts are funded by

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the state. That's all the Judges salaries are paid by the state and then the county gets a trial court funding. Block grant so much for each judicial position and that all those block grants and funding represent about 50% of the cost of the courts. What lies

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ahead for the courts, let's say this year or over the next decade, in in this year. Probably the biggest thing is just the criminal issues surrounding proposition 1 15, seeing what that will mean implementing what will mean in deciding where to go over the next 10

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years. Certainly the impact of 1 15 will will be felt longer than just in the coming year. But the overall context is making cases move through the system more quickly. The general public do not understand why cases should take so long. So I think that's going

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to be the general a general theme were also see have seen a more conservative movement politically in terms of what the what the electorate wants and that will continue to influence the court's Well on the administrative side there'll be more automation, there'll be more movements to

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get rid of paper to make things move more smoothly. But mostly I think it's just to move things more quickly through the system and this is you think basically this is the impact of prop 1 15 to some extent 1 15 but what about 1 15,

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what else will it do? How important is that? Well, there is a very, very major piece of of initiative, a major initiative with a lot of different facets to it, it affects jury selection, it affects the evidence that's brought into court. It affects whether there are

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what so called preliminary hearings, it affects discovery, which is discovery of material between the two parties in a case it affects almost every facet of a criminal case. And the problem is right now watching it so flush out, so to speak, what the appellate courts are

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going to do with it. What parts of its stand there, They have not been allowed to file just a blanket injunction. So now different different entities from the defense bar and from the Attorney General's Office are waiting for cases that they can take up through the

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appellate courts to see what the rulings will be. Does that when there has been a peel against an initiative, does that mean that it is not in effect at the present until it's been decided? This initiative is in effect but they can issue the court, the

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Supreme Court could issue a ruling that would hold it in advance or wouldn't allow it to be in effect until they finished ruling on all parts of the initiative. That has not been the case in this initiative. It will have to each individual issue will probably

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be litigated. Have you have you thought of or learned the thoughts of of the the not individually, but the jurors in general towards 1 15. Is there a pro and con? Pretty much as far as prosecution and defense or what again, it's it's it's wide ranging.

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You have some that are very much in support of that, others who have more concerns about it. So it just depends on on what their frame of mind is. I think most people want to see the system run smoothly and want to see cases going through

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the court. I think all of the judges want to be responsive to the electorate. Absolutely. So they will do what they can to implement this initiative. We're gonna pause for a moment. Ladies and gentlemen, the studio has a couple of very, very important public announcements for

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you after that trash can and I will come back and we'll talk more about the Superior Court. A lot of scientists say that if global warming isn't stopped, beach communities, even whole island countries could disappear in our Children's lifetimes, rainfall and winter storms would become even

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state tax form. Thank you for your help. Welcome back to Sonoma County in the nineties were talking to Tressa Kintner and she is the Executive Officer. Superior Court Administrator, which is your correct title now. Well, it's both. I'm the Superior Court Executive Officer and the Superior

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Court Administrator and the Jury Commissioner. Oh, she's all those things that stress a kenner and she's our guest and it's the first time she's visited with us. And it's very interesting and we're learning a little bit more about Superior Court and some of the things it

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does and also some of the problems involved and how it's run. Now. We were talking briefly about 1 15. What are some of the impacts of prop 1 15 on the Superior court? One of the first is how jury selection is handled in the trial system

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as we see it in California. Prior to proposition 1 15, both the defense attorneys and the prosecution took a very active role in questioning jurors and sometimes jury selection was very long and in order to make sure that they would get an unbiased jury proposition 1

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15 dictates that we go to a more federal system of jury selection which is much more judge directed. And the judge in some federal courts in fact prosecution and defense lawyers say nothing to the jury. They may get they may get to ask questions to the

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judge or submit questions to the judge. The questions may or may not be asked by the judge. So the judges dictating jury selection and that remains to be seen how each individual judge will decide to implement that. But that will be one change. Second change is

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the preliminary hearing. Normally when a felony is filed. The first thing that has to happen is in the municipal court, a judge has to review the evidence or the general nature of the evidence to ascertain whether the case should move forward into superior court and that

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is called a preliminary hearing. That can all be changed and the the district attorney can now go to the grand jury and ask the grand jury to issue an indictment and it's a much different burden of proof. The grand jury can issue indictments without hearing very

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much from the defense side of things or even hearing very much from the district attorney's. Then the other thing in preliminary hearings is they will now be allowed to present hearsay information, which means a for example, an officer can now testify to what some other officers

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saw or what somebody told that individual. So all those things can will change significantly. This is my understanding that this county, the district attorney is going to take a rather conservative approach to 1 15 and implement it slowly Will Proposition 1 15 truly speed up the

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judicial process. It could, it depends on on how how it's handled there. Of course, the arguments for and against it made. If you were a proponent of it, you said it would if you were against it, you said it wouldn't the proponents say that that we

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will move cases along because we won't spend so much time on jury selection. We won't have a two step process where we have a hearing in municipal court and then another trial and in superior Court, The people that were against 115 say that the trial and

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municipal court had a very big role to play in presenting evidence to the defense. That the defense knew what the prosecution's case was and could decide whether to plead or not the uh, the jury selection aspect, they will say that that to help people understand what

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evidence is there, how tight the cases and by not having that process, you may see more cases go forward. That shouldn't I think it just remains to be seen. There's so many unknowns and it's so broad and does so much. We'll just have to wait and

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see, well, anytime we pass sweeping measure like that has all those possible changes inherited. Everybody tries to go slowly, I think with it, don't they? No one, no one wants to just jump in and start using. I mean, they want to know that what they're first

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of all that the appeals are heard and whether it is constitutional or legitimate and then and then apply it slowly. You say this county might apply it conservatively. I imagine a lot of counties will probably look at it that way to begin with, don't you? Yes.

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In fact, in some ways, that's what the Attorney General's Office is recommending Now, the states having a budget crisis, everybody's having a budget crisis. How will the state budget crisis impact or affect the court's well, right now, the courts receive 50% of their funding approximately from

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the state, through a trial court funding block RAM. Now it is at this point, we have heard that the base block rant is, has not been reduced, but there is a, what they call a cost of living increase our cost of living adjustment that is supposed

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to be added to that block grant every year. And that is quote on the table for discussion as to whether it should go forward now, if that cost of living adjustment is not granted. If it's not part of the budget package, then that will take certain

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programs or certain things that the courts wanted to implement this year, make it more difficult because the county would have to, if those things were going to be funded, the county would have to fund them from the general fund. So in the short term, that could

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have some impact in the longer term. I think that the budget crisis does for the courts, what it does to anybody else put you in a very precarious situation for any kind of planning. We're kind of all sitting around, um, not able to do anything for

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three months while we wait while the state is going on, you can't, when trial court funding was was enacted, it said this is a consistent source of funding for the court, but every year since then it has been up to up for grabs when the state

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gets into into budget crisis. So I think that makes it very difficult to plan the county funded many things with trial court funding. If it went away, that would be, what would the county do with all those ongoing things? It would be out of the general

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fund again. What amount is that? Was that trial court funding in this county? Do you recall it? It's it's 252 150,000 per judge. So in municipal, in superior Court $2.5 million. And just under that in municipal court. So maybe $5 million and that certainly would strongly

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affect the county. A county budget wouldn't any county budget, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay. You wear another hat when you were two or three hats, but you or the jury commissioner. Um, what do we mean by the jury commissioner. What does that entail? The as you know,

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one of the keys to the trial court system is a jury and the, it is very important that all juries be selected randomly, that there'll be plenty of jury people to sit on juries available. So that when the courts ready to go, a number of people

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can be brought in for questioning for juries. So the jury commissioner's office is responsible for selecting pools of jurors, getting them into the into the courts, keeping them organized, having what they call panels of prospective jurors available for the court system. Then also for the administrative

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functions of seeing the jurors get paid their jury fees, that employers get verification that someone was here. Looking at reasons for rescheduling someone. Um making sure they get their mileage paid and parking passes and all that kind of thing. But the most important thing is that

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that there is a random jury selection that has jurors available for trial courts. How many trials do we have in a year? That may be asking an impossible question, but approximately how many trials the superior court having I happen to know for the last six months.

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Now these are jury trials in the last six months we've had 14 civil trials and now it's escaping me About 40 criminal trials and you you have to see 12 jurors for each one of those and then to get at those 12, you have to ask,

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you have to question a number so that the office of the jury commissioner, all that work is actually run by the deputy jury commissioner. And if you want to know all about juries, you might want to invite her to come and talk to my all means.

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But you said there are 40 approximately criminal trials and 14 civil rights. 54 trials. Each of those have jurors. Where do you get the jury? Okay, there's a we use the voter registration rolls license, car license rolls, we get all the excuse me, automobile driver's license.

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We bring all that information into a computer and the computer sifts through it and get sends out notices to people based on random selection. What is the computer determined about the people. I mean the computer determines almost nothing except geographical distribution and that's mostly what we're

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looking at is geographical distribution via the computer. What happens if you send a letter to the jury for prospective juror and then they come in and what are they then the judge. I mean the defense and the attorneys questioned them is that I'm not quite sure.

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First you get a notice. If you're injured, you get a notice to call our office and then based on what we see the needs of the court. We'd either put you on call or we tell you to come in. We try to only bring people in

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when we're actually going to have them sit. So we try to limit the limit the number of people. Once you're brought in then and the judge is ready or the case is ready to go to to jury selection. Then a group groups of jurors are sent

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in prospective jurors are sent in as a panel and they're interviewed or questioned by the defense attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys and the judge in order to determine a good jury. A good objective jury for a particular case. What about the grand jury? Did you work

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with the grand jury? Yes. The grand jury actually reports or is under the jurisdiction of the presiding judge of the superior court but our office provides all the administrative support for the grand jury. The grand jury is a almost like a blue blue ribbon commission this

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county a couple of years ago went to a selection process where people can apply to be grand jurors and every fall we send out lots of, we print notices in the paper, we talked to civic leaders and recruit people to sit on the grand jury And

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there's there's 19 members of the grand jury, usually four of them come from the preceding grand jury. Now how many people do you pick for the year? You need excuse me you need 19 but how many do you pick altogether? Okay first we get a number

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of applications in, we hone that down to 60. Then those 60 people are interviewed by the Different groups of judges that is then narrowed down to 30 and those 30 names are taken into the Superior Court and those names are drawn out of a hat, so

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to speak. And the 19 names that are drawn are impaneled to be the grand jury and you actually have four of them usually have are holdovers. So you put 15 people. Thank you very much for being a guest. It's really nice to have you here first.

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Welcome to Sonoma County a few months late but it's nice to have you here in this position and I wish you all the success in the world. Ladies and gentlemen been talking to Tressa Kantner, the Superior Court administrator for Sonoma County. We've been talking about the

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Superior Court and hope you find it as interesting as I did. I learned a lot of things about Superior Court tonight. My name is Rich McGlinchey, the program in Sonoma County in the nineties. We'll be back with you next week with another member of the county

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government family. Until then. Good night. Good luck. Good health to each and every one of you.