The proposed City Court Technology Fund is going back before the Metro Council for another vote.
After the council shot down in September a proposal by the Baton Rouge City Court to allow judges to assess a $5 fee in certain cases to upgrade the court’s antiquated case management system, Court Administrator and Clerk of Court Lynn Maloy is asking the council to vote on the fee once again.
The item will be introduced at Wednesday’s council meeting. The council struck down the measure by a 6-5 vote last time.
Maloy is pinning her hopes for the measure’s approval on two new council members—newly appointed Erika Green in District 5 and Lamont Cole in District 7—and Councilman Buddy Amoroso switching his vote from “no” to “yes.”
“We may have a different result,” Maloy says.
Amoroso told Maloy during the council’s budget hearings late last year that he would vote differently if she brought the item back before the council. He tells Daily Report that after reflecting on the issue, he feels it is a “justifiable need” for the court.
At the Sept. 9 meeting in which the council voted on the item, members Joel Boé, Trae Welch, Chandler Loupe, Scott Wilson and Donna Collins-Lewis voted yes, while Amoroso, John Delgado, Ryan Heck, Chauna Banks-Daniel, C. Denise Marcelle and Tara Wicker voted no. Ronnie Edwards was not at the meeting.
Now, Edwards and Marcelle are in the Louisiana House of Representatives, replaced by Green and Cole, respectively.
Maloy says she has not spoken to the two new members about the item, but will do so before the item comes up for a public hearing on Feb. 10.
A new records system to replace the decades-old one in use could cost anywhere between $500,000 to $1.5 million to purchase, depending on which features the court administrators opt for. Another $160,000 to $200,000 would be needed annually to maintain and support it. The state Legislature created the City Court Technology Fund this past session as a way to replace the obsolete system. The statute says the judges can impose a $10 fee, but the Baton Rouge judges agreed to set the fee at $5 for people who are convicted of a crime, plead guilty or forfeit their bond, including in traffic cases.
A critique from the council in September is that Maloy and the judges did not have a specific dollar figure that they would need for the new system. Court officials have been crafting a request for proposals to send out to manufacturers to better gauge a price and select a vendor, but that process has taken longer than anticipated and is not completed.
Nailing down a vendor and specific dollar figure were also required by the state Supreme Court for a portion of a $1 million federal grant the court received. Maloy has said she would apply for the money, but the city-parish missed the window, which closed in late 2015, to apply and must wait and see if the court receives more federal grant money to allocate.
After the council shot down the fee request, Maloy requested nearly $400,000 from Mayor Kip Holden’s administration in the 2016 budget to help fund, at least partially, the new system. That request was denied, partly because Holden’s administration was waiting to see if City Court administrators would receive any grant money from the state Supreme Court. William Daniel, Holden’s chief administrative officer, was critical of the council’s decision in September and has said he would help the court try to sway the council if Maloy and the judges came up with a specific dollar figure.
—Ryan Broussard
