New study recommends New Orleans court merger; chief Traffic ...

Another voice has joined a growing chorus seeking to consolidate court operations in?New Orleans, in this case by merging Traffic Court into Municipal Court. A city-commissioned report released Friday argues?for streamlining?the city's balkanized?court system in part through the proposed merger.

The report by?The PFM Group, based in Philadelphia,?is the bookend to a report released two weeks ago, commissioned by Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin, that found "highly fragmented" and low-tech coordination among public safety agencies in the city.

That finding was no surprise to anyone familiar with the criminal justice system in New Orleans, which is split in more pieces?than in any parish in the state. It's also severely antiquated, the first?report found, with paper record-keeping, hard-copy calendars, handwritten summonses and other pre-tech systems.

The follow-up report notes that New Orleans, with separate municipal, traffic and city courts, has more separate?judicial systems than any parish in Louisiana. It says a total staff of more than 450 employees could be reduced by 25 percent through a merger and other measures.

The study ranks Traffic Court as the most bloated, with more than 21 full-time positions for each of the four judges, compared with 20.5 in Criminal District Court and about a dozen for each judge in Juvenile and Municipal courts.

Despite relying on fines and fees for itself, and to funnel into city coffers and other state-mandated?programs such as public defense, Traffic Court has no formal program?to collect fines, the report found.

The report's top recommendation is to create a single Municipal Court "that hears misdemeanors, ordinance violations and traffic cases." It encourages city officials to seek state legislation to eliminate Traffic Court.

A?merger of Traffic and Municipal courts appears to be gaining a head of political steam, even from within. Robert Jones, the chief administrative judge at Traffic Court, said late Friday that he's open to the move.

"I do agree that from the standpoint of economies of scale, the merger of those two courts would save money and make sense from a financial standpoint," Jones said. "It's just in line with the other parishes in the state. Misdemeanor and traffic court matters are adjudicated in the same courthouse by the same judges."

Jones said the study misstates personnel figures for Traffic Court; the number of Traffic Court employees is not the 86 positions that the study counts, but 71, he said. The court, he said, has been trying to streamline.

Still, he said a merger would make sense, in part because both courts need to bring their case management systems into the 21st century and could do it together. "It can't be done overnight. It needs to be thought out. There are logistical nightmares that await," Jones said. "There would be positions that would have to be eliminated. I would be willing to sit down and discuss it."

Jones said he's "gotten word from City Hall that this is something that they would like to see accomplished."

Ryan Berni, a spokesman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office, said the study?should help?spur?reforms across the criminal justice system.? "It's fair to say the PFM report represents a good point of departure for some very serious conversations that need to held by all partners in the criminal justice system so that it improves its efficiency and coordination and keeps the people of New Orleans safe," he said in an e-mail. "The status quo has not been effective nor financially sustainable, so changes must occur."

The elimination of judges, as opposed to court staff through a merger, could prove more challenging; it may require statewide legislation that could jeopardize judgeships elsewhere in the state. "That's a matter that's being debated and discussed and analyzed by the (Supreme Court) judicial council. I'm going to defer to them," Jones said.

The study released Friday also recommends eliminating magistrate commissioner positions in Criminal District Court, or leaving them unfilled, citing the recent shift of thousands of misdemeanor cases to Municipal Court.

There appears to be?far?less?political momentum behind that move.

New Orleans Traffic Court has come under intensive fire over the last year. In a scathing report last year, Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux's office cited the court for stealing money from the city and other agencies, misstating its revenue, paying full-time salaries and benefits to part-time judges and employees, and letting a contract accountant charge more than $600,000 in 2010 while also serving as the campaign treasurer for a sitting judge.

A Times-Picayune report found that the court's contract accountant, Vandale Thomas, pocketed more than $1.2 million in less than three years from checks written by Jones and the three other Traffic Court judges.

Quatrevaux's?report also said that four traffic court judges were far too many, given the paltry number of trials that take place there. Quatrevaux's office figured on a $2.5 million savings by merging Traffic Court into Municipal Court.

Jones also said Quatrevaux's office is in the process of re-auditing the court. "Traffic Court is ready to be reviewed," Jones said. "We think the measures we've taken and implemented have been responsive to his report outlining our deficits."

The merger talk comes with some dubious political precedent. A post-Katrina plan to combine the Orleans Parish civil, criminal and juvenile courts,?as well as the two elected clerks that manage case files, found footing in 2006 legislation but has since been scrapped.

Jones said a merger of Traffic and Municipal courts may come easier, since they both occupy the same building.

Among other points, the new study recommended:

? Creating a single office of judicial administration to manage all of the courts.

? Better organization and cataloging of evidence at Tulane and Broad.

? A detailed study of court security services provided by Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman's office, which received $2.5 million last year for criminal court services and security at Traffic and Municipal courts.

? New strategies to reduce case processing times.

? Expanding diversion programs to include both lower-level and more serious offenders.

The first part of the study noted a sprawling criminal justice system in the city that employs 3,200 people in agencies that are entirely self-contained, rarely share their data and keep tight control over their own budgets.

The city spent $181.3 million in 2010 on criminal justice, 71 percent of which went to the NOPD alone.

The overall criminal justice budget in the city stands at about $300 million a year, the study found, including local, state and federal revenue along with grants and fines and fees from criminal defendants and traffic scofflaws.

The city spent $90,000 on the two reports.

Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/10/new_study_recommends_new_orlea.html

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