Best Practices Committee

May 6, 2005

Board for Judicial Administration
Best Practices Committee
May 6, 2005
Meeting Minutes

Members Present	Judge Evan Sperline, Chair
	Ms. Pat Austin
	Judge Suzanne Barnett
	Judge Steve Brown
	Judge Steve Buzzard
	Ms. Cece Clynch
	Hon. Kim Eaton
	Ms. Andra Motyka
	Mr. Dave Ponzoha
	Judge Julie Spector
	Mr. Warren Swanson
	Ms. Yolande Williams
Members Absent	Judge Scott Anders
	Ms. Linda Bell
	Judge Michael Cooper
	Hon. Betty Gould
	Mr. Phil Jans (alt.)
	Ms. Barb Miner (alt.)
	Justice Susan Owens
	Mr. Paul Sherfey (alt.)
	Mr. Kevin Stock (alt.)
Guests Present	Ms. Yvonne Pettus
Staff Present	Ms. Colleen Clark
	Dr. Andy Glenn
	Mr. Jeff Hall

CALL TO ORDER

Judge Sperline called the meeting to order. Committee members introduced themselves.

Judge Sperline acknowledged Ms. Pettus' time spent as staff for the Best Practices Committee. Ms. Pettus is now working as Administrator for the Tacoma Municipal Court; Judge Sperline is hopeful that she will soon be joining the committee as a member. Mr. Hall is replacing Ms. Pettus as staff for the Best Practices Committee.

The March 4, 2005 minutes were approved as written.

It was noted that appointment letters for 13 positions on the committee, whose terms are expiring in June, were mailed on May 5.

REPORT FROM ATTORNEY SURVEY WORK GROUP

A subcommittee was created at the March 4, 2005 meeting to work on the attorney questionnaire and questionnaires for various user groups. This subcommittee is chaired by Judge Spector and includes Judge Buzzard, Judge Brown, Ms. Motyka, and Ms. Williams.

Judge Spector reported that the subcommittee met by conference call(s); the general consensus was that the questionnaire(s) should be administered throughout the state. Questionnaires could be reconfigured at some time in the future if deemed appropriate. Concerns were voiced that questionnaires in courts with less than three full-time judicial officers might reflect directly on the judge(s) and not on the overall system. However, the subcommittee did agree that all courts should be included, regardless of the number of judicial officers.

The committee discussed the Attorney Questionnaire for Superior Courts (note that this questionnaire and the one for courts of limited jurisdiction are nearly identical) and made the following suggestions:

• Add a question(s) about interpreters. Something along the lines of:
  "Interpreter services are available [civil/criminal] on a timely basis."
  "Were interpreter services required/used?"
  "Were you satisfied with the service?"

• The difference between ‘not applicable' and ‘no opinion' will be discussed among the subcommittee.

• Staff will look into statistics regarding "Strongly Agree" and "Strongly Disagree"; which response questionnaires should begin with.

• Question 1 could be customized to individual courts.

• Questions 2 and 3: should facilities and procedures be in the same question? Should they be separated? It depends on how in-depth you want the survey to be.

• For question 12, change ‘defendants' to ‘litigants'; and strike ‘sentencing.'

• For question 20, reverse ‘complete' and ‘clear.'

• Change question 21 to: "Court decisions are easy to determine from final orders."

• Move question 22 down (to become question 24), question 23 becomes 22, and question 24 becomes 23.

• For question 23, remove the word ‘always.'

• To question 29, add ‘Juvenile / Dependency.'

• For question 30, include something about tenure; ask the number of years in practice in this court. After the initial sampling is completed, this question could assist in knowing where natural breaks might occur; and if the question should include something like 1-5 yrs, 5-10 yrs, etc., instead of putting in a specific number of years.

• Under question 31b. it was noted that Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race. This race questions were designed to follow Federal guidelines. This will be helpful if comparisons are done outside of Washington State.

The subcommittee will address the CLJ questionnaire and will mirror the Superior Court questionnaire where applicable. Mr. Ponzoha was added to the subcommittee to assist in developing a questionnaire addressing the court of appeals.

The subcommittee will work with AOC; developing appellate questions and protocol for sampling of instrument. This should be completed and e-mailed to the committee before next meeting.

Judge Buzzard reiterated that it is important that when these questionnaires go to the BJA, the issue of one-court judges should be discussed. It was agreed that the Best Practices Committee would be ensure that the issues involving single judge courts be discussed by the BJA.

It is up to the Best Practices Committee to determine how to test a measure before it is adopted. For example the three courts could be chosen to sample or it could be done with the first three courts that actually request an audit. For the attorney survey, the committee felt that prior to administration of the survey in any court, the survey should be tested with a sample group of respondents regarding ease of use, content, and respondent perceptions on the issues addressed.

As June is expected to be Judge Brown and Judge Buzzard's final month with the committee, Judge Spector asked if she could go ahead and recruit a CLJ judge that isn't on the Best Practices Committee to assist the subcommittee. It was agreed that Judge Spector should proceed; Judge Adalia Hille was suggested.

DISCUSSION OF PERFORMANCE AUDIT MEASURES

It was noted that the numbering is out of order; staff will renumber the measures at completion of the committee's review.

Measure 3.5.1 (Payment of Fines, Costs, Restitution, and Other Orders by Probationers)

Data will be provided solely through JIS; none will be collected in the field.

Committee agreed to include this measure with no objections.

Measure 3.6.3 (Accuracy, Consistency, and Timeliness of Case Information Entry)

There are a variety of reasons for discrepancies; items go from the counter to JIS to the case file, papers could be mislaid or human error could affect what is filed electronically. There are different court cultures around the state and optimum staffing vs. real staffing could be an impact. One way to measure file accuracy and completeness is to compare what is in the case file with SCOMIS.

There are three scenarios that could set a court audit in motion:

1. A court requests a performance audit.
2. The BJA directs AOC to audit a court.
3. There is a statewide issue that warrants an audit of courts.

When a report is completed, appropriate footnotes should include things that impacted the audit. For example: Staffing was down 50% when area was measured; Optimum resources not available; 12 staff needed, only have 8.

This measure would be AOC staff intensive. Dr. Glenn will put the measures that are staff intensive into one section; the committee will then rank them by importance.

Committee agreed to include this measure with no objections.

Measure 4.2.3 (Evaluation of the Court's Financial Auditing Practices)

All courts have financial audits done by the state. This would be a checklist of the past three audits, to see if findings made by the state have been addressed by the court. Courts generally implement any suggestions the state auditor makes; there are opportunities for a court to respond if not in agreement with the suggestion(s).

This measure would review only the audit recommendations, not the complete audit.

This could be indicative of how a court is doing overall, if they are responsive to audit recommendations. It would provide an overall view of the courts' financial health.

Committee agreed to include this measure with no objections.

Measure 4.4.1 (Court and Public Access to Court Records)

The committee discussed limiting this to:

• Does the court have a dissemination policy?

• Does the court know about the JIS data dissemination policy?

• Are employees trained in the policy?

• Is the policy in compliance with court rule?

• Have there been complaints when requests are denied?

  The committee agreed to include this measure (as limited above) with no objections.

Measure 1: Safety

(Building a Better Court: Measuring and Improving Court Performance and Judicial Workload in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases)

Following discussion, it was agreed that the two sub-measures described were more appropriately measures of the performance of the Children's Administration. These two measures actually capture the performance of many different agencies and therefore are not appropriate as strict measures of court performance. It was noted that Joanne Moore, Office of Public Defense, keeps track of this area.

This measure should be deleted.

Measure 4: Timeliness

(Building a Better Court: Measuring and Improving Court Performance and Judicial Workload in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases)

This measure proposes seven separate analysis of time in process for dependency cases in superior court, some of these are similar to time in process measures for other case types covered in earlier measures. The list of proposed time frames to measure was developed under a national effort and the measures are therefore generic. Compliance might be more appropriately measured against Washington State statutory deadlines.

Measure 4: Timeliness - APPELLATE

Number 1 is a performance of trial courts, not appellate.

Number 2 specifies time from when a case is filed to issuance of mandate to when trial court finished with case the second time. This is being addressed by a BJA workgroup.

For number 2 there is a gap that needs to be measured. Are the attorneys or court responsible? That is an unknown at this time. This is also a subcategory of case processing time standards for appellate courts.

Mr. Hall will look at what is available and come back with a different list of items; he will also include the appellate courts.

NEXT MEETING

The committee ran out of time for discussion so the Possible Base Measures on page 7 will be first on the agenda item at our next meeting (one page).

Judge Sperline asked committee members to read through the Not Recommended As Base Measures (beginning on page 8) before the next meeting. Judge Sperline also asked that if any committee member thought one (or more) of the Not Recommended As Base Measures should be moved up to the Possible Base Measures to please contact Mr. Hall prior to the next meeting so they can be moved up for discussion.

The next meeting will be Friday, June 17 at 1:30 p.m., in the AOC SeaTac office.

Respectively submitted,
Colleen Clark