The city-parish could be left with the expense of upgrading the Baton Rouge City Court records system, given a decision by the Metro Council last week to shoot down a resolution that would have allowed judges to impose a $5 fee on certain court cases to help fund it, says court administrator Lynn Maloy.
The 6-5 vote on Wednesday by the council has left City Court administrators trying to figure out their next step to pay to replace the decades-old court records system. Maloy says she was surprised at the vote because she and her colleagues had already received backing from the legislature and state Supreme Court.
A new records system could cost between $500,000 to $1.5 million to purchase, depending on which features the court administrators opt for, and another $160,000 to $200,000 annually to maintain and support. The state Legislature created the City Court Technology Fund this past session as a way to replace the obsolete system.
The statute says judges can impose a $10 fee, but the Baton Rouge judges agreed to set it at $5. That expense would be imposed on people who are convicted of a crime, plead guilty or forfeit their bond, including in traffic cases.
City Court administrators are about 90% done with crafting a request for proposals to send out to vendors, so they need to devise a strategy to pay for the system soon. Maloy will meet with the City Court judges at a regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday and hash out some options.
If the council chooses to not bring the issue up for a vote again, Maloy says the court may have to submit an amended budget request for 2016 to include the extra money to pay for the system. The request would be for funds from the the city-parish general fund, Maloy adds.
Councilman Trae Welch, one of the five council members who voted in favor of the new fee, says he thinks it was a mistake not to authorize it because the Baton Rouge City Court is the busiest in the state and “we are working on technology that is literally decades old.”
“We need a better system put in place,” Welch says.
Welch says City Court administrators have been looking to replace the current system for 10 years, which is when the current system was last updated. Welch says that update was akin to going from a DOS operating system to Microsoft Word.
“Shut that court system down for a day and see what happens,” Welch says.
While Councilwoman C. Denise Marcelle agrees that the outdated system needs to be replaced, she says she voted against the fee because there were too many unanswered questions about the plan.
She says she wishes City Court administrators would have met with council members before the meeting to offer insight into how the money would be spent and what other funding options have been considered. Marcelle says she prefers funding a new system without imposing a fee, but if one is necessary, then she wants to be sure it doesn’t exceed $5.
“What I am not interested in doing is taxing people,” Marcelle says.
—Ryan Broussard
