2020 State of the Court Report

Stronger Together: Facing the Many Challenges of 2020 & Moving Forward

The San Bernardino Superior Court (SBSC) began the new decade with a strategic plan in place to position us for growth over the next 10 years and anticipated a continuing stable economy as of January 2020. By March 2020, SBSC, California, and the United States plummeted into the COVID-19 pandemic. SBSC maintained emergency services during the first quarter of the Stay-at-Home orders as an essential and critical function of government. During this time, SBSC also successfully transitioned small claims and landlord-tenant cases in March 2020, as the second of four implementations scheduled to go-live onto our new case management system. Civil and appeals transitioned as the third of four scheduled implementations in November 2020. Both efforts were a tremendous feat for our project teams, and we commend them for this achievement.

By the second quarter of the pandemic, we had outfitted our facilities and employees to begin to expand services as health orders deemed appropriate. We began a fast forward approach to remote access throughout the court, with an “online not inline” perspective, telecommuting where feasible, scheduling service appointments, and moving to remote meetings. As the State of Emergency continues on, services have resumed where possible but are severely delayed where social distancing is a contributing factor. In addition to COVID-19, SBSC was challenged with sudden and severe budget cuts, lack of staff and judicial resources, and civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. The sudden and severe budget cuts required us to review each and every program to search

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