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Preface: The California Official Court Reporters Association (COCRA) remains committed to working with others for a fair, efficient, accessible court system, and will strive to promote the highest level of court reporting services to our courts and the public. After reviewing the Draft Report of the Reporting of the Record Task Force (RRTF), COCRA cannot endorse this Draft Report as the overall embodiment of a course of policy, and offers the following comments to illustrate its position.

(Although sections of both the Draft Report and this commentary overlap, each of the following comments is prefaced by the number of the Section/Recommendation(s) to which it generally is directed. A complete copy of the Draft Report can be downloaded from http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/invitationstocomment/documents/reprec-draft.pdf)

Section I: COCRA supports the Judicial Council’s strategic plan, Leading Justice Into the Future, which calls for paperless courts and the use of realtime court reporting to ensure justice is administered in a timely and efficient manner. COCRA is also supportive of the Judicial Council’s goals of broadening access to our courts through the simplification and standardization of court practices. Court reporting technology is the most accurate and efficient way of creating and distributing the verbatim record of court proceedings.

In advance of these positions and goals, COCRA met with William Vickrey in 2000 and offered to open lines of communication and collaboration with the Judicial Council/Administrative Office of the Courts. The RRTF promised to bring forward the dialogue and reforms COCRA was seeking.

Instead, during its two-year life, the work of the RRTF was disrupted twice when the Judicial Council/AOC unilaterally petitioned the Legislature to reduce court reporting services and to take production of court transcripts away from court reporters. Both of these actions failed and resulted in the California Legislature’s reaffirmation of using court reporters to report court proceedings and to produce the transcripts thereof. Perhaps more profound was a re-engenderment of court reporters’ mistrust/alienation due to the

Judicial Council’s/AOC’s lengthy record of administrative/legislative attacks on the profession of court reporting.

These most recent setbacks also confirmed COCRA’s initial doubts about the composition of the RRTF, which was dominated by court administration and was deficient in trial level participation from the bench and bar. Freelance court reporters, who are called in to court under certain circumstances, were denied a seat on the RRTF. Organized labor, which represents those proprietary and professional concerns of court reporters which underpin so much of the RRTF’s charge, was also excluded from participation on the RRTF. Therefore, many of the RRTF’s recommendations are flawed because they ignore or inadequately address the concerns of court reporters as producers of the court record.

Section III, Recommendation 3: COCRA requests to be kept apprised of the formation of and be afforded an opportunity to participate in the work of a pilot project for the delivery, maintenance, and storage of the electronic transcript, master index, and reporter’s notes.

Section IV, Recommendation Nos. 4 and 5: There are court reporters who would be forced to buy new systems—computers, software—in order to comply with these recommendations. Incurring costs for upgrades and training would place a financial hardship on reporters with little or no transcript income. The amount of time it would take a court reporter to upgrade/train, following the court’s upgrade schedule, will cause a reduction/slowdown in the reporter’s capacity to produce transcript, forcing disruption and delays in transcript delivery. Many courts do not provide intra/internet services to reporters. Without knowing more about the needs of the court at this time, it is impossible to comment further.

Section V, Recommendation 6:

Binding- COCRA supports the premise that transcripts should be bound securely. However, COCRA opposes the requirement of specified cover materials on all transcripts. The requirement of acetate covers on top of paper stock covers is especially impractical on felony pleas, sentencings, probation modifications, and preliminary hearings where said transcripts are often physically inserted into file dockets and find their way to the Appellate Court bundled with the Clerk’s record. This requirement is an excessive and wasteful use of resources because the Clerk’s office would have to remove and discard these superfluous covers to file and store the transcripts.

Identification of Common/Uncommon Events – This recommendation would require a profound shift in the present culture of trial procedure and would necessitate extensive and uniform retraining of the bench and bar, as well as court reporters and other court staff.

Capitalization – The reporting community is split on this issue. However, universal compliance with this recommendation will slow transcript production which could increase costs for users of the transcript.

Sample Transcript Illustration – Does not appear to conform to the format recommendations in this section.

Section VI, Recommendation No. 7A: COCRA disagrees with the RRTF recommendation to establish a single standard word rate and instead encourages a full transition to a page rate. The courts have already established “folio multipliers” to calculate payment for transcripts. As explained in the RRTF report, “Folio multipliers are the number of folios – units of one hundred words – that are attributed per page.” The RRTF report goes on to state the “folio multiplier” was created because of the impossibility of counting words. In other words, the current folio-multiplier-per-page system has evolved as a pragmatic solution to the unwieldy method of calculating transcript costs by the word.

A page rate is also preferable because of the ease of calculation of transcript cost by all parties - courts, attorneys, reporters, and the public. Pages already are plainly numbered in paper transcripts, and the RRTF recommends that page numbering continue to be used in the future for digital transcripts.

In contrast, the RRTF admits, a word rate would require the installation of a statewide computer system and software program capable of being accessed by all of the above parties. This on-line system would involve additional costs, as yet undetermined, where a page rate could be implemented at no cost.

The RRTF report claims that there is “widespread disparity in the cost of the transcript within and among courts throughout the state.” This disparity is caused by a wide variety of recognized folio multipliers, which is further exacerbated by an even greater, often imperceptible, number of transcript formats in use. Still worse, some local courts do not recognize/require any particular transcript format.

The most straightforward, uniform way to determine the cost of a transcript is based on a standard cost per page tied to a standard transcript page format.

Section VI, RecommendationNo. 7B: COCRA agrees, except that the word rate should be a page rate, as stated above.

Section VI, Recommendation No. 7C: COCRA is against revenue and expenditure neutrality. As stated in the “Executive Summary” on page 10 of this report, “The Judicial Council charged the RRTF with evaluating the provision of court reporting services.” That evaluation should have, but did not, adequately address the valuation of those services, including compensation for transcripts. Reporters have not had an increase in transcript pay for 15 years. To have the RRTF not only ignore this inequity, but to suggest that any reporter not be given an increase, or worse, be given a rate cut, is unacceptable. If such overarching recommendations for changes and improvements in court reporting services can be considered, so equally must the fairness and sufficiency in remuneration for those services.

Section VI, Recommendation No. 7D: COCRA agrees, except that the word rate should be a page rate, as stated above.

Section VI, Recommendation No. 8: COCRA points out that a page rate would eliminate the need for a statewide software program to count words. The cost alone of installing a system statewide and making that system accessible to all stakeholders, as charged in the report, versus establishing a page rate, which would not cost anything to implement, is reason enough to support a page rate as opposed to a word rate. A page rate could be implemented at the same time as the uniform transcript format and would bear no cost at all. This recommendation contradicts the Judicial Council’s overall goal of simplification and expanded access, because it adds an extra, unnecessary step and cost to all parties. A page rate is simple and easy to understand.

Section VI, Recommendation No. 9: COCRA’s goal is for reporters to be fairly compensated for their work, which includes a long overdue raise for both originals and copies. COCRA objects to any recommendation that the court assume control of copies. This discussion is at least premature, transcripts and copies are still pervasively delivered on paper, and most probably, unnecessary. COCRA sees no problem with proceeding to digital transcripts without the court assuming a proprietary interest in the copies. The court’s general obligation to maintain public records, in both paper and digital form, does not override a court reporter’s specific statutory right to be compensated for copies.

Section VII, Recommendation Nos. 10, 11, and 12: COCRA has opposed and continues to oppose any and all parts of the document entitled, “Agreement – Use of Non-stenographic Methods for Reporting of the Record, February 6, 2004.”

Additionally, COCRA disagrees with the claim that CCRA “represents the majority of California official reporters.” Official reporters are represented by unions, and those unions were not invited to take part in the negotiations that resulted in the Agreement” and they were not invited to participate in the RRTF.

CCRA also claims that petitions were circulated, including a copy of the “Agreement,” to official court reporters. It is important to note CCRA did not circulate the Agreement in its original form. Instead, CCRA circulated the agreement with a modified title, “Court Reporter Protection Act,” which misconstrued the nature of the agreement, as told by many reporters who received the agreement. Other reporters say that they were handed a petition to sign bearing the title “Court Reporter Protection Act” by a trusted colleague and asked for their signature with the assurance “this will protect your job for the next ten years.” Still other reporters have complained of being asked to sign the petition bearing the modified title without being given an explanation of the agreement at all. None of the reporters from whom

COCRA has received this feedback took the time to read and develop an independent position on the agreement, and many have expressed regret at signing the petition. Therefore, COCRA concludes the petitions were used as a signature gathering exercise, rather than an analytical tool to measure reporter support for the substance of the original “Agreement – Use of Non-stenographic Methods for Reporting of the Record.” This tactic nullifies the conclusion that the signatures gathered by CCRA are a reflection of reporter support for the agreement.

COCRA is opposed to any non-stenographic method for reporting the record other than that which is already allowed by statute, pointing out that the Legislature, when faced with electronic recording (ER) proposals both last budget fiscal year and the year before, overwhelmingly rejected any expansion of ER at all. In fact, two years ago, the Legislature imposed a fee for reporting services in civil matters under an hour (Government Code Section 68086(a)(4)), generating an estimated $30 million per year in revenue. This year, not only did the Legislature refuse to expand the use of ER, but it reinforced its commitment to limiting the use of ER by prohibiting courts from spending money on ER equipment unless it was specifically to be used in proceedings authorized by Government Code Section 69957.

The Legislature has made itself clear on this issue over and over again. It is time that people listen.