Court Commissioners Judge the Job for Themselves : Justice: In an acknowledged judicial purgatory, one man’s thankless endeavor is another’s steppingstone to higher position. Either way, it helps to be a workhorse.

Truth, judges like to say, is a matter of perspective.

Take, for instance, the case of two former Ventura County court commissioners and how they got tagged with the prefix “ex.”

David W. Long has maintained since his first day of work as a commissioner--an acknowledged judicial purgatory for aspirants to the bench--that he had the greatest job in the world.

“This is the best move I ever made,” he said, when accepting the commissioner’s post in 1993.

But John Paventi, the man Long replaced, has a different take on the job.

“It is a very stressful, high-volume and thankless job,” said Paventi, who retired as a commissioner in 1992. “And no matter who appears before you in court, they’re all mad at you.”

It’s all a matter of perspective.

While Long acknowledged that it has been a hectic schedule, friends and colleagues said he never lost his zest for the job. His two years of enthusiasm despite hearing countless pleas in small-claims courts, the shrill cries for temporary restraining orders in family court and the bogus excuses in traffic court paid off Tuesday when Gov. Pete Wilson elevated Long, 54, to Ventura County Municipal Court.

“He is one judge who got appointed solely on merit and not simply because he knew the governor,” said John H. Pattie, a fellow commissioner.

Pattie, along with Manuel J. Covarrubias, will be left to split the commissioners’ sometimes overwhelming court calendar once Long assumes his new post in the next couple of weeks while officials seek his replacement. Officials estimate that the three Ventura County court commissioners typically decide a combined 50,000 cases a year involving an astonishing array of criminal, civil and family law matters.

“I sometimes forget which hat I’m wearing,” Pattie said, only half-jokingly.

Unlike their brethren on the higher courts who are allowed to concentrate on one field of the law, court commissioners preside over small-claims matters in the morning, divorce court disputes in the afternoon and traffic court at night.

They handle landlord-tenant disputes, adjust child support agreements and occasionally preside over misdemeanor trials.

“They are the workhorses of the courthouse,” said Court Administrator Sheila Gonzalez.

The commissioners are not authorized to issue search warrants and do not preside over felony matters. But they are referred to as “your honor” in court and have the authority to send criminals to jail.

“They are very much our colleagues,” said John R. Smiley, presiding judge of the Ventura County Municipal Court.

While judges are paid by the state and must stand for election every six years, commissioners are the creation of the county and serve at the pleasure of the 27 elected Ventura County judges. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors agreed to fund the three positions after it became clear eight years ago that the state would not increase funding for more judges.

“There are only so many judges spots and a finite amount of money,” Smiley said. “And there is an unquestionable amount of increases in cases each year.”

With the black robes, 85% of the salary and most--but not all--of the powers of judges, the three commissioners have the task of handling the type of judicial proceedings and hearings that both civil and criminal jurists would just as soon skip, given their overflowing dockets.

“Commissioners have a horrendous schedule,” Paventi said. “And you end up doing everything.”

Paventi answered an advertisement in the Los Angeles Daily Journal in 1988 and was hired as Ventura County’s first court commissioner since the mid-1970s. The longtime prosecutor was hired to hear misdemeanor, traffic and small-claims cases in Simi Valley.

For the first two years, he was the county’s lone court commissioner and the only judicial officer assigned to the Simi Valley Courthouse.

“That was my courthouse,” he said. Paventi said he has fond memories of those first few years as a commissioner.

“Those first two years were extremely interesting,” he said.

But by 1992, Paventi said he was burned out. He retired.

During his tenure, Paventi drew strong criticism from attorneys who appeared before him. For all of his work, the Ventura County Bar Assn. named him the worst judge in the county in 1992. Defense attorneys contended that Paventi was quick-tempered, rash and prone to snap judgments that often sent petty criminals to jail.

But that was then and this is now. By all accounts, the current commissioners are held in high regard and all profess to be happy with their jobs.

“Sure, we take all the scut work,” Pattie said. “But we all knew that when we took the jobs.” Further, Pattie contends that the same points of law, for the most part, are debated in felony murder cases and minor traffic infractions.

“To the litigants in my courtroom, their cases are just as important and earth-shattering,” he said.

Covarrubias, Pattie and Long all agree with Paventi that their workdays are long ones. And judges and lawyers agree that the commissioners, all of whom were in private practice before their appointments, earn every penny of their annual salary of nearly $92,000 a year, which is $15,000 less than the annual salary of a Superior Court judge.

“All three of the commissioners take care of a lot of loose ends that the court handles,” said defense attorney George Eskin of Ventura. “And all three have a good reputation.”

On Thursday, Covarrubias presided over the controlled chaos of the child-support calendar in Ventura until almost 6 p.m. while most of his colleagues had closed their courtrooms by 4:30 p.m. With babies crying and litigants standing before him, Covarrubias handled the long docket with patience and a no-nonsense approach.

By 8:15 a.m. the next day, he was back on the bench listening to traffic matters, which gave way to small-claims cases in the two hours before noon.

Meanwhile, the IN basket on his desk was stacked two feet tall with child-support cases, while the OUT basket remained empty.

But Covarrubias, an Oxnard High School graduate who earned his law degree at Loyola Marymount University, said he loves his job and the opportunity to present himself as a role model to the Latino community.

“Whether we want to or not, we are role models,” Covarrubias said.

Hired in January to decide child-support issues primarily, court officials credit Covarrubias, 43, with trimming a massive backlog of cases.

“What was happening [before Covarrubias was hired] was that when we filed a case, it would take months to hear,” said Ventura County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Coleman, who is in charge of child-support operations. “That has been reduced dramatically.”

As a result, Coleman said, more deadbeat parents are being brought before the straight-arrow Covarrubias and forced to resume payments.

The erudite Pattie, 58, tackles his job a little differently than Covarrubias. Much of Pattie’s highbrow sense of humor is lost on the grumbling scofflaws pleading their cases before him, but that doesn’t stop him.

“Why are we here?” is the question he poses with a sly grin to nearly everyone appearing before him. Hardly a defendant or plaintiff catches the double meaning.

Instead, they plow on with their excuses and alibis.

A man accused of speeding stands before Pattie, rambling on about how fast he was actually traveling on the Ventura Freeway. Pattie cuts the man off in mid-sentence.

“They,” Pattie said, gesturing to the California Highway Patrol officer acting as accuser in this case, “must prove you are guilty without help from you. You do not have to say a thing. They have to do all the work.”

The admonition does no good.

The man continues with his story, indignantly contending that he was driving 65 m.p.h., not the 75 m.p.h. alleged by the CHP officer.

“By your own admission, you were exceeding the speed limit,” Pattie said with a smile and a slight shake of the head. “Guilty.”

Pattie, the longest serving commissioner and the only one to declare that he has no designs on a higher court position, said he took the job in 1992 because he was looking for a challenge.

“I was bored” in private practice, he said.

Then there is ex-Commissioner David W. Long, who took a substantial pay cut from his private legal practice to become one of the “younger stepbrothers of the brotherhood,” as Pattie puts it.

He became the first court commissioner since Lawrence Storch was appointed in 1977 to the Superior Court to make the jump to a higher court in Ventura County when he was sworn in as a Municipal Court judge last week.

The former Marine is one of the better success stories in the Ventura County Hall of Justice.

An insurance adjuster for most of his professional life, Long decided to become a lawyer. Despite never attending a four-year college, Long graduated at the top of his class at Ventura College of Law and went on to a lucrative career as a civil litigant before becoming a court commissioner, presiding with Pattie in the Simi Valley Courthouse.

“I was making a lot of money,” he said. “But I wanted to be remembered for something more than a good trial lawyer.”

But Long conceded that there are some drawbacks to wearing the black robe.

“You won’t see me driving 70 m.p.h. on the freeway,” he said. “And I could tell a good joke with a raunchy punch line, but not anymore.”