Cole, Langston: financial analysis of JP consolidation needed

It was hoped that the consolidation of two justice of the peace roles into one would be a “smooth transition,” County Commissioner Tony Berget said last week, but a recent meeting of the commissioners indicated there were still rough patches.

The commissioners will meet again Wednesday to decide the fate of the Eureka Justice of the Peace office, which had been scheduled to stay open until the end of the year. In January, commissioners voted 2-1 to consolidate the part-time justice of the peace position in Eureka with the full-time justice of the peace position in Libby.

Eureka Justice of the Peace Stormy Langston said Monday that it was possible the office could continue to stay open beyond January, but she was waiting to see what the commissioners decide.

Ahead of the Nov. 4 election - when Langston and Libby Justice of the Peace Jay Sheffield will be up against each other for the one consolidated position - county commissioners are talking about what the financial savings will be after the consolidation. They will also be discussing the possibility of the 1.5 clerk positions at the Eureka office being reduced or eliminated.  

It was also still being debated if the one consolidated position would be based in Eureka or Libby. At last week’s meeting, Lincoln County Attorney Bernie Cassidy said his interpretation of state law was that court files had to be kept at the county seat.

It made sense for the justice of the peace to be where the files were, Cassidy said.

Langston said last week’s meeting with the commissioners was to clarify if there was going to be an office in Eureka or not. A financial analysis, which had not yet been done in depth, would look at how much money the county could save by reducing or eliminating the Eureka office.

“And in doing this, what other offices would be affected,” Langston added.

One way of managing the consolidation is to begin using video conferencing for sentencing. Sheffield said at last week’s commissioner meeting that the first video sentencing had gone “extremely smoothly.”

“Procedurally, it worked well as long as documents are available on the other end. The video portion is smooth as long as there is a fax machine,” Sheffield said.

Langston, who was on speaker phone from Eureka, argued that the set-up had not been smooth.

Sheffield then said there had been some confusion between the clerks about requests from defendants to be tried, using video conferencing. “It was the very first one so there is going to be some confusion on the first day,” he said.

While the video-conference sentencing was successful in its second run on Monday, Sheffield also said it was frustrating that he couldn’t make any decisions about court operations in the future until a decision was reached about how many clerks there would be and where the one office would be based.

“You can’t formulate a game plan if you don’t know where the stadium is going to be,” Sheffield said.

During last Wednesday’s meeting with the commissioners, Eureka Commissioner Mike Cole – who voted against the J.P. consolidation in January -  asked for a financial analysis of how much had been saved by consolidating.

“I would like to see more of a financial analysis – the whole basis of this (the consolidation of two positions into one) is based on saving money. Why haven’t we seen that on paper?” Cole said.

Executive Administrator Bill Bischoff said there had been one on paper.

Cole replied “it was pretty vague” before telling Berget that he wanted to see the financial analysis.

Berget responded by saying: “I want to see yours.”

On Monday, Cole said he would be bringing his own financial analysis to Wednesday’s meeting.