Frustration was evident in Spokane Mayor Mary Verner’s announcement that the city will have its own municipal court beginning Jan. 2. She said she’d preferred an agreement under which the Spokane County District Court would continue to provide that service, but “the time for resolving differences ran out.”

The deficiency that needed fixing was identified dramatically Nov. 8, 2007, only a couple of weeks before Verner became mayor, when the state Court of Appeals issued a ruling that threatened to set dozens of convicted law-breakers loose.

But after nearly a year, a statutory deadline made it too risky for the city to keep talking, so the mayor and the City Council settled for a separate court. Now the city has until Jan. 2 to name the judges and commissioners who will preside over the new municipal court and to decide where it will be.

And when the Legislature convenes in Olympia days after the new court goes into being, city leaders will lobby for changes in state law to give cities and counties more flexibility.

While the city-county conversations that ultimately ran afoul of the calendar were confined to the past year, the idea of restoring a separate Spokane municipal court has been on some minds for a decade. A fretful, contentious, politicized and litigious decade.

And it probably wouldn’t be happening even now without the pressure that the state Court of Appeals supplied last year. That ruling invalidated two defendants’ drunken driving convictions because the judge who presided over their trial, based on a city ordinance, had been elected in a countywide, rather than city, election. A predictable scramble ensued among jail inmates and their lawyers foreseeing an open jail door.

Fortunately, the appellate ruling has been stayed pending a Supreme Court appeal.

Verner reasonably launched a process to come up with a solution, whether it involved contracting the work to District Court or establishing a separate municipal court.

The latter option seemed unlikely, however.

In 1998, a union representing city workers squabbled with the District Court judges over working conditions for court employees and pushed for a separate city court. They got the idea on the 1999 ballot, but voters gave it a resounding no.

Mayor Jim West tried again in 2006, sparking a spat with the District Court judges.

But it was last year’s appeals court decision that provided the momentum the concept needed. When city-county collaboration breaks down, the vision of convicted drunken drivers getting off scot-free can be powerfully motivating.

No one familiar with local government dynamics in the Spokane area will be startled to learn that “resolving differences” proved a daunting challenge for city and county representatives. When intergovernmental dissonance has an impact on the criminal justice system, however, the public has a right to expect better.