Poor process kills court consolidation, for now
Senate Bill 283, we bet you’ve never heard of it, and won’t until next year. The bill would have folded the Municipal Court’s duties into State Court. Probably not a bad idea, but the bill died because of poor execution, not on the state level, but the entire idea stepped off on the wrong foot.
Over in the Senate only two of the local delegation’s senators signed on, John Kennedy and Burt Jones, and Jones is from Jackson. He said he only signed on because he thought Kennedy and Sen. David Lucas were in agreement, but Lucas had his name removed from the bill.
When it got to the House the reception was also chilly. Rep. James Beverly didn’t sign on, neither did Rep. Bubber Epps, nor did Rep. Miriam Paris, so as much as Rep. Allen Peake may have thought the bill would push efficiency, his powers of persuasion were limited by the poor process long before it landed under the Gold Dome.
The boat started to leak last October when Municipal Court Judge Bobby Faulkner discovered that the State Court folks had been, without his knowledge, asked to see if they could handle the workload of his court. He was not happy about being brought into the process so late in the game, after they had determined that State Court could, with some adjustments, handle the additional caseload. In December when the mayor presented a resolution to the Macon-Bibb County Commission that would have asked the state Legislature to combine the courts, Faulkner expressed his displeasure, saying, he didn’t think it was right for the state court to “go behind my back,” to propose the court merger. “And I resent that.”
The resolution was tabled on a 5-4 vote and it was later agreed that the Middle Georgia Regional Commission would study the idea to see what efficiencies may or may not be gained by combining the courts.
The commission had not heard the results of that research when SB 283 came on their radar — and to some commissioners, the bill came as a surprise. So now the commission is stuck — not by a self-inflicted wound — but by an administrative process that tried to be too delicate.
It would have been much better to be open and above board about consolidating the courts. Now, going into budget formulation time, the commission is going to be looking for every dime it can find, knowing it is facing fiscal challenges. The two courts, which are revenue producers, probably won’t see any efficiencies in the upcoming budget cycle as many had hoped.
This story was originally published March 29, 2017 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Poor process kills court consolidation, for now."