LAKE COUNTY — As the transfer of Lake County”s two trial court facilities continues negotiations, fees the county pays to the state have trended downward over the past two years.
“There were three components of this,” Lake County chief deputy administrative officer Matthew Perry said Thursday. Perry said the first is a flat fee the county pays. That fee, $133,003 in the 2007 ? 2008 fiscal year, was reduced by more than half after two assembly bills passed in 2005 amended it.
Perry said the reason the flat fee was reduced is that civil assessments were calculated into the original $375,570 fee. Those assessments are now passed directly to the state rather than passing through the county”s budget after they are collected, according to Perry.
“We pay that to the state and they use that to pay employees, or whatever other operational expenses they have. It”s not designated for a specific purpose for court operations,” Perry said.
The second component is a portion of court fees and fines collected during the fiscal year. Perry said a base amount of $375,570 was set based on court collections in the 1994 ? 1995 fiscal year. “Half of anything above that amount we send to the state,” Perry said. That amount has increased marginally in the last three fiscal years, according to Perry.
The third component is undesignated fees. “The state wanted a certain amount state-wide of undesignated fees,” Perry said. “The county pays a portion of that.” This fiscal year, Perry said the state wanted $10 million; Lake County”s portion is $24,000.
That amount has also gone down, Perry said. The Judicial Council of California, Administrative Office of the Courts notifies the county each year in the spring or summer of what that amount will be.
It is the last implementation of a 10-year-old law. The Lockyer-Isenberg Trial Court Funding Act of 1997 has been implemented in phases. The first two phases involved transferring court employees” status from that of county employees to state employees. It also involved establishing an annual fee that each California county pays the court system each year for operation of the courts.
The property transfer involves the fourth floor of the Lakeport courthouse and the South Civic Center in Clearlake.
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