It is Official: Court Committee Disses Mass. Court System

A committee hired by the Massachusetts court system has condemned its management in incredibly blunt language. The system can't manage itself, and we are paying a price in money, inefficiency while we wait in the hall for hours for our cases to be called, etc.

Here is what the Massachusetts Court Management Advisory Board said, citing an earlier study which everyone either ignored, or just didn't want to change things:

"The lack of meaningful authority is evident throughout the courts. Each layer of management has little ability to direct the next and little accountability to the one above. Reporting lines are vague and do not reflect natural working units. Basic tools of authority are undermined or absent; consequences cannot be tied to performance; resources cannot be removed or redirected; even the selection of those in key positions is often outside of a manager's control."

Report entitled, "Legislative Action Required to Achieve Managerial Excellence in the Trial Courts." March 2010.

They have said essentially the same thing in NINE separate previous reports commissioned since 1976, but the honchos just stick them on a shelf and ignore them.

The report goes on to say that, "No Executive Department of the Commonwealth, and no private sector organization, could ever operate within such a labyrinthine structure where no one is clearly in charge and where important business is performed by personnel over whom the titular leadership can exercise little or no real authority ..."

At least we now know why everything is so messed up. I would guess that this tenth report will join the other nine on the shelf, and wait for an eleventh to be prepared and ignored as well.