Digital Purgatory

The Wall Of Shame

If you happen to end up on this wall it is because we believe your professional career in California’s judicial branch should have a visit from the reaper. You’ve broken the public trust and your obligation to provide honest services to the people. We the people are asking you to consider taking up a career in a place where you’re likely not to cause too many problems. McDonald’s, Burger King or Taco Bell careers come to mind and that is why I will be sending you an application to make action easy.

William “Hi-Ho $ilver” Vickrey – Who through ivory tower politics has singlehandedly led the AOC down an illegitimate path by disenfranchising AOC employees, protecting people who conduct patently unlawful acts within his organization and promoting secrecy and corruption within the AOC. While Mr. Vickrey has announced his retirement, his departure could not come soon enough for the employees of the Judicial Branch.  He is now retired in Arizona

Ron “Tonto” Overholt – Who has also led the AOC down an illegitimate path by disenfranchising AOC employees, protecting people who conduct patently unlawful acts within his organization and promoting secrecy and corruption within the AOC. He is now with the Pima County courts in Arizona.

The entire AOC Board of Directors, including William Vickery and Ron Overholt, for letting over a billion dollars in stimulus funds sail by the AOC unclaimed, only so they could avoid independent oversight, transparency and accountability with respect to the 5 billion dollars of taxpayer funds they already have their grubby meat hooks on in the form of penalty assessments.

Fred Stetson – Senior Manager of OCCM’s Facilities Management Unit duped AOC employees into believing he was pursuing tens of millions of dollars in stimulus funds for a building management systems energy efficiency project to be funded by a DOE grant. Mr. Stetson is also responsible for oversight of the previously unlicensed contractors and abdicated that responsibility when he took the job.   Retired

Mary “The Lizard” Roberts – the director of the Office of General Counsel for the AOC for redacting deloitte contracts, for redacting names from the SEC comments and for fixing court cases, like the AOC vs. Jacobs case and for making herself grand-pubah policymaker for the entire judicial branch. Also, for letting Todd Torr telecommute from Switzerland.  (Retiring by year end 2013)

Gerald “Jerry” Pfab – Current Senior Manager who worked with Fred Stetson in duping AOC employees into believing that OCCM was pursuing tens of millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds for building management systems energy efficiency project. Also jointly responsible for the unlicensed contractor debacle. Additionally responsible for the current “the deal of the decade” facilities maintenance and operations RFP on behalf of the trial courts.

Kenneth “Ken” Kachold – Southern Regional Office manager for OCCM-FMU and the contract manager for the “Team Jacobs” contract, assisted in duping AOC employees into believing that OCCM was pursuing tens of millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds for building management systems energy efficiency project. Also jointly responsible for the unlicensed contractor debacle.

Sheila Gonzales-Calabro – Head of the good ship CCMS and hands down, the most haphazard executive project manager that ever existed in California state government. Under her watch and her flawed pay as you go strategy to technology design, the estimated costs for CCMS have gone from 250 million to some 3 billion dollars. Retired

Stephen Nash – Former AOC Finance Director and current CEO for San Bernardino Courts. Mr. Nash distingishes himself not only for being the finance director that passed up stimulus funds, but the guy whose department issued over a hundred change orders to CCMS without blinking an eye and a gentleman whose department issued over six hundred contract change orders to the previously unlicensed contractors statewide. Mr. Nash is responsible for negotiating these long term contracts that have financially buried the AOC resulting in making cuts in anything but employees difficult. Mr. Nash also oversees the branch cleaners in Internal Audits that make bad things (like team jacobs and court mediation records) disappear.

Mark Dusman – The clueless IT director for the AOC who shares responsibility for the 3 billion dollar boondoggle called CCMS.

Contra Costa County Court Executive Kiri “Harakiri” Torre for her indiscriminate terminations of anyone who she believed would get in her way, for requesting that everyone else in her office give up some pay or benefits while she was raised to one of the highest paid (if not the highest paid) person in California’s Judicial Branch. Oh no, we’re not done yet… Ms. Torre also gutted not just one court business day. She gutted them all by reducing hours every day. In doing so I see an AOC “access and fairness award” in her future.

Commissioner Gregory Saldivar, a 14 year veteran of the bench in South Santa Clara County. Commissioner Gregory Saldivar was instrumental in the Cardinalli tow and sue scam siding with the Cardinalli’s time  after time, permitting the Cardinalli’s to utilize Saldivar’s courtroom to rob respondents and destroy their credit rating for 10 years with judgements based on dubious interpretations of the law, fraud, deceipt, forgery and a failure to serve respondents. While the Cardinelli/Greer duo got 14 years and 8 years in prison respectively, Mr. Saldivar has yet to pay the price for his role in the tow and sue scam which should at the very least remove him from the bench, yet we here at JCW knows that a scandal such as this is a prerequisite for a future position sitting as a puppet on California’s Judicial Council.

John “The Cleaner” Judnick, the senior manager of the AOC internal audits division serves as the ironically named “confidential fraud waste and abuse coordinator” for California’s judicial branch of government. His title as the ironically named “confidential fraud, waste and abuse coordinator” accurately represents what his role is in coordinating fraud, waste and abuse. He operates an 800 number where dumb-ass judicial branch employees who genuinely believe they are doing the right thing reporting fraud, waste and abuse can call and file a report. Mr. Judnick’s role is not to do a fucking thing about any fraud, waste, abuse or public corruption. His role is to ferret out the whistleblower, ferret out the facts, ferret out the evidence and then make it all disappear. Mr. John Judnick is a central figure in the taxpayer funded racketeering enterprise that is the AOC.

Eric “The Cleaner’s Boy” Pulido is the supervising analyst in the internal audits divison and the number two person in charge. His job is to work with John “The Cleaner” Judnick supervising lower level auditors but also to work together to ensure the judicial branch or trial courts remain faultless.

Michael “Mike” Roddy – Court Executive for San Diego County Courts and a former Judicial Council member. While he voted twice as a judicial council member on instituting new rules and forms for family courts, he failed to promulgate or adhere to those same rules in his own court for many, many years.

Judicial Council Member and Marin Court Executive Officer Kim Turner. Kim Turner demonstrated to Judicial Council leadership that when the going gets tough, you can count on her to keep her mouth shut and do what she’s told. In 2005, her boss John Montgomery, the previous court executive officer was arrested and charged with 10 felony counts for among other things, funneling $650,000.00 worth of consulting contracts to his live-in girlfriend. And just who signed off and knowingly approved all of these expenditures? That’s right, Kim Turner. It was only while the AOC was performing an audit of Kim Turner’s office did she choose to be a whistleblower as opposed to taking the blame herself. This is a valued trait on the Judicial Council and quickly put Ms. Turner on the path to superstardom and a seat in the Star Chamber. A few years later, her ability to obstruct justice became evident again, when, in the face of a JLAC audit of Marin’s notorious family court services, Ms. Turner pushed off the Bureau of State Audits for months while she was destroying evidence of misdeeds in the family courts. Today, Ms. Turner is one of our new Chief Justices most valuable assets and leads a group of other court executive officers to be indoctrinated and assimilated to the AOC collective.

AOC Human Resources Director Ernesto Fuentes. Let’s first start with his background so you will know why the taxpayer funded RICO that is the AOC hired him. Mr. Fuentes was the former inspector general of the Los Angeles Rapid Transit District. Whereas most inspector generals ferret out fraud, waste, abuse and public corruption, Ernesto Fuentes worked as a “cleaner” disposing of evidence and threatening peoples careers and livelihood. Well he was actually caught doing the latter. By two of his IG inspectors no less. One named Laster and another named Yeats, called him on the carpet for telling a LARTD employee that if they cooperated with his investigators, that persons career would go stagnant. When the two inspectors confronted Mr. Fuentes about what he had done, he fired them. Having a well established track record for firing whistleblowers, Bill Vickrey and Ron Overholt saw in Mr. Fuentes the perfect enforcer to keep AOC employees quiet if they want to keep their jobs. Under Mr. Fuentes tenure, over 60 HR people have been forced out or were fired. Many because they refused to violate state law. Under Ernesto Fuentes, the AOC was flooded with questionably qualified applicants who never went through any background checks whatsoever. After burning through his own staff, he then turned his carnage upon other divisions of the AOC and did their dirty work. Mr. Fuentes’s job was eliminated in May of 2012 (how do you eliminate HR?)

AOC Director of the Office of Court Construction & Management Lee Willoughby -for his continued use of unlicensed contractors and directing his people to erase the word “Team Jacobs” from their vocabulary. We also call into question the propriety of being the principal decisionmaker of a 6.5 billion dollar construction budget while being chairman to a non-profit organization sponsored by many of the very companies he is doing business with, including Jacobs Engineering Group. Mr. Willoughby is primarily responsible for the unlicensed contractor debacle and the deal of the decade facilities maintenance contract.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye – By virtue of taking the helm of the California Supreme Court you’ve also assumed the role of the top administrator in the branch. Rather than take a critical look at all of the things falling apart around you, you have chosen to ignore it all and support the very people who caused the mess in the first place. Between term limits of legislators and scandals unfolding all around you and your administrative offices, you have little political clout. Primarily because they are plain as day sitting there for everyone to see and evaluate for themselves and you’re pretending they don’t exist. Early on I recommended that you take a page from the playbook of Alan Mulally and surround yourself with people who will tell you what is wrong and how to fix it. No, you had to rely on the same sycophants who got George into this mess to get you out of it by covering it all up. It doesn’t work that way sister. That is intellectually dishonest and an insult to judcial branch employees across this state. You can conduct a regime change or stay on this wall, it is up to you.  On 7-22-2011 you made the decision, despite your pledge to keep the courts open, you made the decision to shut them down by cutting their budgets instead of your pet project boondoggles. Surrounded by a group of judicial council appointees who all have a vested interest in the new courthouse they may get if construction spending isn’t diverted to keep courts open, you are choosing instead to build your cronies new courthouses while allowing courts and court services to shut down all over the state. For this, JCW proudly issues the Rose Bird award for Chief Justices that should be thrown out of office.

Former Judicial Council member and former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Ellen Corbett (D) San Leandro. Ms. Corbett was warned early on by her constituent Michael Paul about the shady dealings with “Team Jacobs” and rather than represent her constituent, she participated in the cover-up. Now she is carrying legislation to block paid signature gatherers to prevent you from throwing her (and other officials) ass out of office. Recently she authored Senate Bill 242 which would have imposed improbable regulation upon social networks. Currently she is the majority leader in the Senate.

Jack Halpin – For nearly 22 years Jack Halpin has sat as a judge on the Shasta bench. Problem is, no one ever elected him to be a judge. It is almost like it is a defacto lifetime appointment with the occasional break in service for a vacation. For 19 of those years, Jack Halpin has been perpetually re-appointed by consecutive chief justices. While the Governor could not make a lifetime appointment of  judge that never has to be elected, it appears several chief justices believe that they do have the right to make lifetime appointments – just in smaller chunks. The assigned judges program was designed to fill vacancies caused by illness, vacation or retirements of other bench officers. It was never intended to be a long term mechanism where the chosen few could double dip a whole other salary. Jack Halpin has been the poster child of abuse related to this otherwise worthy in intent program. But like most other programs run by the AOC, this is just another program that has been running amok for two decades. If they haven’t addressed any problems in this program in twenty years, what makes one believe they would address any other problems brought to their attention?

Judge Dave Rosenberg – Up until this moment, Judge David Rosenberg was a shooting star on the judicial council…. but one needed only peel back a layer or two to find out how he got there. You see, Judge Rosenberg was a fraternity advisor and lifetime member of Alpha Epsilon Pi at UC Davis during the hazing of one Ryan Clifford by the fraternity. He would also be the judge that would be assigned the case of Ryan Clifford vs. Alpha Epsilon Pi wherein Ryan Clifford was brutally hazed by the fraternity members. CV 09-1282 filed May 15th 2009.  It would be Judge David Rosenberg’s involvement in this case that would sully the judiciary in Yolo County and simultaneously propel Judge Rosenberg on his path to the star chamber because it is compromising situations such as this where one might come upon a CJP action that could conceivably remove them from the bench that creates malleable tools like Rosenberg for seats in the Star Chamber. And elevated he was. This case has Judge Rosenbergs fingerprints all over it as an advisor to the fraternity. Furthermore the case was reassigned first to newly appointed Judge Reed and then to newly appointed Judge McGuire of Yolo County, a personal friend of Rosenberg. During the course of the legal action, Judge McGuire would be challenged in an election for his spot on the bench. In response, Judge David Rosenberg, a fraternity advisor to Alpha Epsilon Pi and a lifetime member of Alpha Epsilon Pi would give Judge McGuire a contribution of 1,050 and a loan of 5000.00. An attorney for the firm representing Alpha Epsilon Pi would give McGuire 300.00. None of these donations would be disclosed by McGuire to the Clifford family prior to Judge Maguire disclosing such only after being requested to recuse himself by an attorney for Ryan Clifford. Such failure to disclose these contributions at an earlier time was a violation of California Code of Civil Procedure Section 170.1, subdivision (a)(9)(C) When the Ryan’s family attorney found out about the sizable donations that were not disclosed, they asked Judge McGuire to recuse himself. Court documents show that Judge Maguire then struck a formal disqualification filed against him by Ryan Clifford for prejudice on April 3, 2012 and dismissed the case on April 6, 2012.

That’s how Rosenberg became a chosen one. Since then he has tried to play both sides of the fence arguing court autonomy and centralization at the same time. He claims to be a member of the ACJ but wants to re-chart their agenda. And now you know how some judicial council muppets get their strings.

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On 7-22-2011, all of these distingished Judicial Council public servants made the choice that courthouses being built for them (denoted by ***) was more important than preserving access to justice, keeping the courts open and people employed to serve the public. While Judge Smith, Senator Evans and Assemblymenber Feuer were absent from this meeting, they’re being held accountable for what they didn’t do to stop it. 

Hon. Tani Cantil-Sakauye – Chief Justice of California

Hon. Marvin R. Baxter – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

Hon. Judith Ashmann-Gerst – Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal
Second Appellate District, Division Two – Los Angeles

Hon. Douglas P. Miller – Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal
Fourth Appellate District, Division Two Riverside

Hon. Harry E. Hull, Jr. -Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal
Third Appellate District Sacramento ***

Hon. Stephen H. Baker *** Judge of the Superior Court, County of Shasta.Hon. James E. Herman***Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Santa BarbaraHon. Ira R. Kaufman *** Assistant Presiding Judge ,County of PlumasHon. Mary Ann O’Malley ***Judge of the Superior Court, County of Contra Costa

Hon. Winifred Smith *** Judge of the Superior Court, County of Alameda.Hon. Kenneth K. So *** Judge of the Superior Court, County of San DiegoHon. Sharon J. Waters *** Judge of the Superior, County of RiversideHon. Erica R. Yew *** Judge of the Superior Court, County of Santa Clara

Members of the state legislature and judicial council unworthy of the office they hold

Hon. Noreen Evans *** Member of the California State Senate

Hon. Mike Feuer *** Member of the California State Assembly

Members of the state bar and judicial council whose practices should be boycotted

Ms. Miriam Aroni Krinsky Attorney at Law.Ms. Edith R. Matthai Attorney at Law

Mr. Joel S. Miliband Attorney at Law.Mr. James N. Penrod Attorney at Law