SACRAMENO - Bowing to pressure from Assembly Democrats, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed to make public the names of committee members he relies on to evaluate judicial candidates.
As a result, Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Dave Jones on Friday dropped language from a bill that would have forced disclosure after Schwarzenegger assured him that his office was taking steps to publish the names.
"Our goal all along was to try to improve transparency in the process and work to make sure we have greater diversity in judicial appointments," Jones said Monday from the Assembly floor.
Democrats added the disclosure requirement last week to AB 159, a bill to expand the California bench by 50 judges, as part of a concerted effort to increase the number of minorities and women in the judicial ranks. They argued that confidentiality encourages a good-old -boys network that favors white men -- who account for more than two-thirds of bench officers in the state -- and is overly weighted toward prosecutors and litigators.
"If it were to turn out - and I'm not saying this is the case - that the local committees were of just one particular ethnicity or another, it might help explain why we are seeing nominees of a particular ethnicity moving forward," Jones said.
A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger declined to comment on the bill or the discussions with Jones' office.
The agreement came hours before Friday's legislative deadline to amend bills. Republican legislators said they were unfamiliar with the last-minute change and could not comment. Democratic legislators seemed content to let the governor release the names voluntarily rather than force a showdown.
"I am pleased that once we put that language in the bill, the governor decided we are correct," said Assemblyman Ted Lieu, a leader in the Asian Pacific Islander caucus and a vocal proponent of diversity on the bench.
The underlying purpose of AB 159, to add judges to a bench strained by a booming population, has near unanimous support in the Legislature. However, the bill became politicized last month when Lieu and other minority lawmakers publicly threatened to pull their support to protest what they contend is the governor's dismal track record appointing minorities and women.
Lieu said the amendments added last week to AB 159, to track minority applications and loosen the definition of "legal experience" considered by the State Bar's Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation, or JNE, as well as the governor's own actions, convinced him to support the bill.
"It is a step in the right direction," Lieu said of Schwarzenegger's decision to release committee member names, "but there is an awfully long way to go."
Steven Baric, chairman of the California Republican Lawyers Association, criticized Democratic lawmakers for overstepping their legislative authority and setting a dangerous precedent for future governors be they Republican or Democrat.
"Democrats are playing politics with judicial appointments," Baric said. "Instead of sitting down and saying, 'We want to have excellent judges appointed, and appointed in a hurry,' they are playing games and trying to use leverage against the executive branch. ... What they are doing is absolutely unheard of."
Jones did not say when the governor's office would release the names, although Lieu said he thought it might be at the start of the year.
"What they told us is they were already working on making the names public," Jones said Monday.
Fredericka McGee, general counsel for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, said she understood that only a handful of committee members have opposed having their names released and that is why the governor's office has yet to publish a list. She said the committees perform a "significant governmental function" and should be subject to public disclosure requirements.
There reportedly are seven judicial appointment committees operating around the state.
Diane Wasznicky, a family law attorney who has chaired the judiciary committee for the Sacramento County Bar, said the Schwarzenegger administration has done nothing unusual in tapping trusted members of the community to vet judicial candidates. Wasznicky said her committee, the makeup of which is public, reviews judicial applications only after they've gone through a first round of review.
"We are not part of what I jokingly refer to as 'the Kitchen Cabinet,'" Wasznicky said. "We don't necessarily get the initial names, but get the names they are sending to JNE.
"All of the governors have people in the community that they go to for opinions on literally vetting potential possibilities," she added. "There is another committee out there, I just don't know who it is. And I don't know that anybody will ever get rid of that. They aren't appointed, I don't know what they are."