It didn't work out.
Soon, the city came back and reversed itself, if we accept soon as being several years.
And now enough time has passed so that this lesson has been lost, and the city is replacing its three part time contract judges with a full time judge. The advertisement for the position is running currently.
The logic behind this is that a full time municipal judge, not having a private practice, has no conflicts. That logic is highly flawed and completely in error, actually the opposite is true.
Municipal judges are not part of an independent judiciary the way that circuit court, or district court, judges are. Indeed, under the law they need not even be be lawyers, although the city's advertisement requires one. Others judges aren't hired by the the jurisdictions they serve, they're nominated by a special state committee that exists for that purpose and then chosen by the Governor. They aren't hired by a city council, in other words. And other judges stand for election every few years, with the question being whether or not they are retained. City judges don't do that either.
So in the case of municipal judges their client is the city.
A contract lawyer, having an existing clientele, isn't beholden to a city council for his rice bowl. He or she is actually more independent than a full time municipal judge. And if a conflict arises, we had three judges. Any conflicts could easily have been handled.
And then there's the matter of pay.
Judicial salaries always tend to be in sort of a catch up cycle with private practice. They never match the higher ends of private practice but they are high enough, in the case of non municipal positions, that a lawyer can made a good middle class living on them. That's important because most of the applicants for judicial positions are taking a pay cut and desire to do the work for other reasons, but at the same time they always are fairly experienced and several years along in their careers at a bare minimum. That in turn means that most of them are married, have families, etc. That makes a difference to most people. That will in turn narrow the list of applicants to a municipal position that pays well below what the other judicial positions pay and frankly below what the pay for most established lawyers is. This means that the applicants will fit into a narrow group of people for whom the pay is less of an issue, for whatever reason, but that in turn means that the wider range of people we'd like to apply won't.
Indeed, I've been surprised to learn over the years how many people have occupied the part time judge position, with many being very experienced and respected lawyers. The key is that they held it part time.
Oh yeah. . . what happened to our full time municipal judges?
Well, in at least one case one angered the police department by not giving out sufficiently large fines. They went to the city councilmen and he was fired.
Not the way that a court is supposed to work.
And speaking of contractors, it's now the case that one of the city councilmen wants to quit hiring outside engineers for engineering work and do it all in house.
Frankly, my view is that more should be contracted out.
It's almost always the case that any entity hiring professionals is better off contracting out the work. Very few entities of any kind really need to employ the type of staff that is really required to do things like engineering, legal work, accounting, and the like on a really active basis. Usually the in house professional simply monitors the work done by the outside professional. There are exceptions to be sure. And plenty of them. But I don't see that as being one.
Indeed, I'm not sure of the logic behind it, unless it was felt that it was a cost savings approach as the city already employed engineers. But my guess is that it doesn't employ enough or specialized ones to make that work really well.
And I'm not optimistic about the changes at the city court.
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