Justice court consolidation issue escalates

Public reaction to the consolidation of the Lincoln County justice courts escalated during the past month, as a group of residents from northern Lincoln County continue to press the county commissioners to reevaluate their December 2013 decision.

Myles Hickman, the group’s unofficial spokesman, presented a list of questions to the county commissioners at the commissioners’ Feb. 18 meeting in Eureka. The questions, as well as the objections aired by the citizens’ group, focus on the perceived loss of services to the people of north Lincoln County.

“We’re paying the same taxes as before, but we’ve lost a bunch of services,” Hickman said.

The consolidation eliminates the justice court based in Eureka and moves that workload to the remaining county justice court, based in Libby. Criminal and traffic cases will be handled in the Libby courtroom, while civil, landlord-tenant and small-claims matters will still be held in the Eureka annex. Justice of the Peace Jay Sheffield, who defeated Eureka Justice of the Peace Stormy Langston in an election between incumbents last year, said he will travel to Eureka to hear those cases, but the need to do so has not yet arisen.

Hickman presented three criteria he suggested for analyzation during the next six months to determine if the consolidation is successful.

First, he suggested the number of tickets being written in north Lincoln County was down, although he acknowledged local law enforcement’s denial of that claim. He labeled the decrease in citations as “blue flu.”

Statistics provided by the justice court show 65 tickets written into Eureka justice court and 147 into Libby justice court between Jan. 1 and Feb. 19, 2014. For the same time period this year, there have been a combined 222 tickets, an actual increase in 10 tickets.

Data was not immediately available as to the distribution of these tickets between what would have been the two separate courts had the consolidation not occurred, as the court’s database doesn’t distinguish between the old two-court system and the current one-court approach.

Sheffield said tickets aren’t really an issue, as most people opt to just send in a check or go online to pay their fines. “It’s extremely rare that a ticket ends up in court,” he said.

The second suggestion was an examination of cost of transporting prisoners between Libby and Eureka for hearings. Sheffield said the transportation cost is not really an issue, as the only jail in Lincoln County is in Libby, and that situation hasn’t changed.

He indicated most prisoners elect to attend their hearings using the Vision Net computer system, which enables them to appear while remaining in the jail. Should a prisoner request to be physically present at a hearing, transportation to the Libby justice court would incur a much lower expense than would transportation to court in Eureka.

The final request was to evaluate the increase in hours necessary for the Libby justice court to absorb the Eureka caseload.

“I have an A-team,” said Judge Sheffield. “The transition has gone very smoothly and we’re not having any trouble keeping up the work.”

In the time period of Jan. 1 to Feb. 19, 2014, the two courts handled a combined 312 cases, 226 in Libby and 86 in Eureka. For the same time period this year, the Libby court has handled 333.

Hickman also requested proof that the anticipated savings were being realized by the county. Former Justice of the Peace Stormy Langston questioned the savings, indicating the phone lines were still being kept active and the building is still in place and still requires maintenance, upkeep and utilities.

Reports provided by the Lincoln County clerk and recorder’s office show a savings of $8,711.71 in the first full month of the court consolidation. The county spent $8,973.76 on the Eureka justice court in January 2014. The expenditure for January 2015 was $262.05.

Hickman, as well as other citizens present at the previous two county commission meetings in Eureka, also expressed concern that court documents are not as easy to obtain as they were previously, and that there is no staff present to help explain the various court documents, what they mean and how to complete and submit them.

One specific area of concern brought up in the meeting was the difficulty for citizens in northern Lincoln County to obtain temporary orders of protection, primarily related to domestic abuse cases. Sheffield said only one case of domestic assault was filed in the Eureka justice court last year.

Cookie Haidle, a domestic violence advocate in north Lincoln County, said she no longer recommends victims seeking help in domestic abuse cases file for temporary restraining orders.

That statement, as well as the accusation of the “blue flu,” offended Commissioner Mark Peck. “I’m not going to listen to that kind of rhetoric,” he said. “It’s meaningless to me.”

The concern that has appeared at every meeting is the manner in which the decision was made. “The commissioners ran roughshod over the wishes of the community,” Hickman said.

The decision was made on Dec. 30, 2013, following public meetings in which a number of citizens voiced their concern and opposition to the consolidation. Then-commissioners Ron Downey and Tony Berget voted in favor of the consolidation, Eureka commissioner Mike Cole voted against it. Cole is the only member of the board of commissioners still in office.

Cole said if a new vote was taken today, he would still vote against consolidation. “I felt like we didn’t do it properly. There wasn’t an adequate review in the process and 100 years of service people were used to here disappeared overnight.”

Peck, who has taken office since the decision was made to consolidate, said he was sympathetic to the citizens’ concerns, but he has yet to see anything that would make him vote to change the decision.

“Unless access to justice or civil liberties are compromised, we just can’t afford to maintain the court up there,” Peck said. “The law requires that the county seat have a Justice of the Peace, we couldn’t move the operation to Eureka and we couldn’t afford both.”

Wednesday’s meeting, Peck said, pushed him further away from supporting the move to reopen Eureka’s justice court. “The meetings had been fairly professional up until yesterday, but that meeting just went, well, you saw it.”