First branch to close down in April as yearlong saga continues
With virtually no discussion at Monday night’s board meeting, the Walworth Village Board voted to abolish the village’s municipal court first branch as of April 2015.
“It’s disappointing, but not surprising. I told them they didn’t need two courts a year ago, and if they have come to the conclusion or the realization that two courts aren’t necessary, then it’s disappointing that they would close down branch one,” said Judge John “Jay” Peterson, who was who was re-elected to a four-year term in April 2011.
The board voted unanimously on Monday to correct some wording and approve the ordinance which will result in the village having only one municipal court branch, currently referred to as branch two.
Village trustees Todd Watters and Kent Johnson were absent from Monday’s meeting.
“The perception of independence of the Walworth Municipal Court took a big hit because the only difference between court one and court two is the degree of involvement of the police department in the proceedings. And if the village board chose to discontinue branch one, then the perception is they wish that the police are involved in the court process,” Peterson said.
“If you look at what has happened in the village of Walworth over the past year, it is very disturbing,” Peterson said. “The village is like the plaintiff. The plaintiff has created a new court, has taken the judge they didn’t like out of the picture, not for anything wrong that he did, they just didn’t like what I was doing and how I was doing it, appointed a new judge who was one of their own on the village board, and that judge allows the police to handle the pretrial negotiations against the strong recommendation of the municipal court judge’s handbook and also picks the court clerk, who is also an employee of the police department, which is also strongly discouraged. The police department, the officers, are going to be the witnesses testifying against you when you come to trial.
“It’s like, if you take it in the regular context of a civil trial, I’m going to sue my neighbor, and I don’t like the judge I have, so let’s pick my friend to be the judge, and let’s have the court proceedings run the way I want them, as the plaintiff, and let’s see what kind of outcome I get. How is the public going to think that you are going to get a fair shake when you come to the Village of Walworth court? It’s unnerving,” Peterson said.
Last year, the village board had voiced concerns about the municipal court’s rising amount of unpaid fines and Peterson’s handling of indigency cases. There were no allegations of wrongdoing on behalf of the court or Peterson, who has been municipal judge in Walworth since the court was formed in 2006, but village trustees asked Peterson to resign last December.
The second branch was formed in February, making the Village of Walworth the only municipality in the state other than Milwaukee to have a municipal court with more than one branch. At that time, the village board named Peterson judge for the first branch and Charles “Pat” Hubertz judge for the second branch.
Since then, it has been reported at monthly board meetings that the court’s new branch is bringing in more revenue than the village’s court collected in previous years.
However, Peterson said the difference in the two branches is how pretrial negotiations are handled. Last November, village trustees became upset when Peterson ordered that a lawyer, rather than police, conduct pre-trial negotiations for the municipality, a procedure the board had not budgeted. However, Peterson the village’s counsel advised in December that “it is a safer option to have an attorney [rather than police] handle pre-trial conferences.”
“The police department’s involvement in negotiating out pretrial negotiations is not allowed in any other municipal court in Walworth County, but it seems as though the village of Walworth board wants it to be that way. I, as the judge, cannot condone that practice any more from a year ago, when I made my rule change. That is the only difference between the two courts,” Peterson said.
“The perception of the court as being independent and uninfluenced by the police department and the village board, I don’t see how anyone can reasonably expect the court to be independent with that type of influence, especially with what has gone on in the past year,” Peterson said. “The pretrial negotiations that are handled by the police for court two is a practice that is condoned by the municipal court judges association and is not followed by any municipal court in Walworth County.”
Village trustees were unable to take any action on another ordinance that would transfer all jurisdiction from the municipal court’s first branch to the second branch because the village attorney had not yet written up the ordinance.
“We will probably have to have a special meeting on that because there are a couple cases bouncing around that aren’t going anywhere right now,” Village Board President David Rasmussen said.
On Monday, the board tabled hiring a court clerk for municipal court branch one. Because there has been no court clerk, the village of Walworth has not had any court hearings involving zoning ordinances or parking tickets since last December.
However, Peterson said that he appointed a new court clerk two weeks ago, and she is attending a mandatory court clerk’s conference this week.
Peterson plans to hold court on Nov. 13, he said.
On Monday, village trustees discussed how the municipal court should maintain records.
“We do not have software to handle a multiple branch court at this point,” Hubertz told the village board Monday night.
To get a separate computer system set up with new software would cost about $11,000, Hubertz said.
Rather than spending that much money, Hubertz recommended that the citations that are being covered by branch one be kept manually in an Excel file.
“If they need assistance with that, either I or the branch two clerk could help set that up, but we need to keep accounting of the monthly revenues, expenditures, all the different citations that are in the system. We want to keep those separate,” Hubertz said. “Then, at the time of consolidation of these branches, sometime in 2015, we can just merge them in. We did a lot of that already this year with some of the other cases that were out there outstanding.”
Village trustees agreed that would be the best record-keeping procedure to follow over the next five months.
On April 7, voters will decide who the village’s municipal court judge will be. Both Hubertz and Peterson plan to run for the position.
