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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

Senate panel kills court proposal to redistribute magistrate judges, rather than add more

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously today to kill legislation proposed by the state’s court system to remove the requirement that every county in the state have a magistrate judge, according to the Idaho Falls Post Register. Post Register reporter Bryan Clark writes that the issue is of prime importance in Bonneville County, which has so few magistrates relative to its caseload that more than 70 percent of its magistrate court cases are heard by judges who’ve traveled in from other counties.

At the legislative budget hearing for Idaho’s judicial branch in January, courts Administrative Director Sara Thomas told JFAC that Idaho’s magistrate judges are currently on the road so much that some are sitting outside their home county four days a week, and some are traveling up to 20,000 miles a year. That’s because every county that chooses to have a magistrate judge has one – even if caseloads in the county don’t warrant it. But then they have to travel to where the cases are.

“The result has become a very costly system,” Thomas told JFAC. “In addition to the cost of travel, the judiciary is losing the time – work time is being transferred into windshield time. And I have to say that the human cost of spending 80 percent of your work week away from home can’t be forgotten.”

As a result, the courts proposed two alternatives to lawmakers this year: Fund an additional magistrate judge in Bonneville County, where another is needed; or lift the requirement for one in every county and let the courts “move magistrates, when there are vacancies, to the places where we need them.” Only counties with less than four-tenths of 1 percent of the statewide population would forego having a resident magistrate, under the proposal.

But senators, led by Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, today rejected that alternative, while acknowledging that likely means JFAC will need to fund an additional Bonneville County magistrate next year, at an estimated cost of $127,600 for nine months; that would bring Idaho to 92 magistrate judges.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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