NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Madison County District Judge Orville Clift doesn’t want a disagreement between the county and Huntsville to reduce his court’s budget, so he ordered its expenses to be paid with money generated from fines and fees levied in his court.
The district court handles mostly misdemeanor and traffic cases, primarily occurring in the county and Huntsville, which until this year split its operational costs equally. A county decision to reduce its contribution would have left the bulk of the district court’s roughly $156,000 annual budget to be paid by Huntsville.
Last year, the county and city each paid about $78,000 toward the operational costs.
Madison County Judge Frank Weaver said a longstanding agreement to split the cost of the court’s operational costs depended on the city’s annual contribution to the salaries of the county’s emergency dispatchers, which was about $35,000 in 2011. Weaver said Huntsville Mayor Kevin Hatfield told him the city intended to stop paying the money for dispatch, so Weaver decided to stop paying half the cost of the court.
The cost-sharing agreement was in place before he and Hatfield were elected to office in 2010, he said.
“Prior to our coming into office, there was an interlocal agreement - a gentleman’s agreement, if you will,” Weaver said.
Hatfield said the county provides dispatch service to Huntsville only at night, but city residents pay the same tax for 911 service as every other county resident. The tax goes to the county, so the city paying the additional $35,000 seemed to Hatfield like city residents paying twice, he said.
Weaver said that in absence of the city’s contribution, he opted for the county to instead pay what Arkansas Code Annotated 16-17-115 requires, which is half of the judge’s salary and half of the chief clerk’s salary. The county budgeted $26,000 to cover those salaries in 2012.
Weaver said no one from the city has contacted him about the county’s decision to pay less.
When Clift saw that the county’s 2012 budget included a much smaller allocation for the court, only $26,000, he decided to take action, according to the Feb. 17 order.
“[The county’s] action thus places this Court in danger of having to reduce or eliminate vital functions of the justice system in Madison County,” Clift wrote inhis order.
Clift declined to comment.
Chief District Court Clerk Michelle Bohannan said she has already started following Clift’s order.
Bohannan said county cases make up the bulk of the court’s caseload, which is growing in part because of changes made last year by the Arkansas legislature’s passage of Act 570.
Act 570 reclassified several felony crimes such as drug and theft charges as misdemeanors as part of a comprehensive plan by Gov. Mike Beebe to slow the growth of the state’s prison population.
The district court caseload has been growing at a rate of about 50 cases a month, Bohannan said. She said there were about 220 new county cases each month this year, up from175 for the same time period last year. Bohannan said she expects the county will see a corresponding increase in revenue from fines and fees generated by those cases.
Bohannan said the countyreceived $261,304.01 from court fines and fees in 2011. The city’s revenue from fines and fees totaled $44,000.12. The amount the county and city receive in 2012 will be reduced, according to the order.
Huntsville City Attorney Howard Cain said that Weaver’s decision is based on a partial reading of Arkansas Code Annotated 16-17-115(a), which goes on to say the county “shall, at its annual meeting, make an appropriation of a sum sufficient to pay the county’s proportion of the expenses of any such district court.” Cain said by his reading of the law, the county’s “proportion of expenses,” is greater than half of the two salaries.
“The operational expenses of a district court are the whole ball of wax,” he said. “Salaries, paper, ink. Whatever operational expenses are, you have to look at the total picture.”
It’s not unusual for cities and counties to have funding arrangements that stray from state statute, said Keith Caviness, staff attorney for the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Caviness said that many other jurisdictions have a state legislator make their individual agreements legal by having them included inArkansas Code Annotated 16-17-108, which sets salaries for district court personnel for jurisdictions included. He said if a court is not included in Arkansas Code Annotated 16-17-108, its funding is based on Arkansas Code Annotated 16-17-115.
The judge’s salary won’t be a matter for debate after 2017, when Madison County DistrictCourt becomes a state court, Caviness said. The state is in the process of implementing changes required by Amendment 80 of 2000, which includes putting district court judges on the state payroll, he said.
Caviness said funding beyond the judge’s salary will remain at the discretion of local governments after the conversion in 2017.
Unless Clift’s order is challenged in another court or the Legislature addresses the issues, Caviness said, Madison County District Court will continue to be funded pursuant to Clift’s order.
“(Clift) is the administrator of the court, and I would say there’s nothing to prohibit him from entering that order. As to whether it’s correct or not, I’m not going to be able to say,” Caviness said.
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Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/07/2012