Fiddling with local courts
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The business of government is to see that no other organization is as strong as itself." That's the way U.S. President Woodrow Wilson viewed government's tendency toward domination, and his assessment remains unshakable.
For all the good governments do in our country, they do like to usurp power.
The latest target for state government is the local system of justice courts. Justice court judges operate on the local level, marrying people and adjudicating matters like traffic citations.
Justice courts work well, but are always being criticized by people who have been issued traffic tickets and are made to pay fines. It's no secret: People don't like paying fines, even when they've broken the law. So they accuse the justice courts and the local constabularies of conspiring to pump money into local coffers.
Those very accusations, and the view of some district and supreme court judges that such suspicions tend to tar all levels of the Utah judiciary, led to a two-year study about whether to shift control of the justice courts from cities to the state. That two years is up and to no one's surprise the recommendation is that a new bureaucracy should be created in the state's judicial branch.
The suggestions are to pay justice court judges up to 90 percent of what district court judges make, and make them state employees.
But they would still be adjudicating the same local matters. It seems to us having the state oversee this work would be unnecessarily burdensome and expensive. And we can't really see how it would affect the outcomes of justice court hearings: People would still have to pay their traffic fines for violating traffic laws, and so they'll still be up in arms. Alleging collusion between the cops and the local courts is simply a deflection of their responsibility in the matter.
The Utah League of Cities and Towns as well as the Utah Association of Counties are opposed to implementing the recommendation. It makes sense, since the move to state control would affect local power and, perhaps, the flow of money into city coffers.
But even if that's the organizations' primary motive for opposition to the change, we believe they're right. This is a matter of local control. If there are serious charges of corrupt justice courts, complaints should be filed and prosecutors should investigate. Until it can be demonstrated that there is a serious and widespread problem in Utah's justice court system, the status quo should prevail.
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