By the end of the month Tulare County Superior Court will permanently close the Tulare courthouse shifting more court business to Porterville and Visalia. The court announced in late June it faced a $3 million shortfall and would cut 15% of its budget due to the fiscal crisis in the state.
Although the cuts will mean at least 26 position cuts, that won’t change the workload of the court, explains Judge Lloyd Hicks.”I like what Judge Roper said the other day.You,member of the public,won’t be affected unless you have business here to collect a bill, get a divorce or need to evict someone.It is going to mean higher fees and longer wait times to get decisions. Loss of these jobs means someone else has to do the work.” Hicks says the court’s overall workload is going up,not down.
Hard hit is the juvenile dependency court that has now lost commissioner Charlotte Wittig in the shuffle. Wittig had served for 14 years.
Besides the loss of 26 long time employees, Judge Hicks says the system has also lost the services of long time Judge William Silveira.”His assignment was not renewed” says Hicks, putting the extra workload on 3 remaining judges.
Although Judge Silveira had officially”retired”in 2005 after 29 years on the bench – he was still working and had an active caseload.
Famed in the county for his service to family and youth court issues, Judge Silveira pioneered a “Model Youth Court” and after a series of tragic shootings – promoted a half-cent sales tax, paying himself for full page ads in the paper – to build a new juvenile detention center that was successful. The Tulare naive joined the bar here in 1968 was first appointed to the court in 1976.
The shortage of space should be relieved next year with the construction of the new courthouse in Porterville to open in fall of 2013.
The loss of the courthouse in Tulare was not unexpected although now sooner than anticiapted.”It has long been the court’s intent to close the major operations of the Tulare division upon completion of the South County Justice Center currently under construction in Porterville. However, due to the significant budget reductions in fiscal year 2012-13, the Court concluded that closing the entire Tulare Division now would realize a significant and immediate cost savings and that consolidating these operations into the Visalia and Porterville divisions would improve efficiency.” said a court statement.