The Color of Money

On Friday, March 18, when Harris County released its draft budget, a number of county justices of the peace saw evidence of something they’d suspected for weeks: a recent and unusual audit of justice courts had less to do with tracking county money than it did with finding out how justices could help fill the county’s coffers.

Last month, 11 of Harris County’s 16 justices of the peace refused to let County Auditor Tommy J. Tompkins conduct sweeping audits of their office finances. The auditor argued that the broad examination was needed so he could track revenue from the point at which fines and fees are first assessed through the time the money is actually deposited in the county’s general fund. But since prior audits had only focused on the procedures used to collect fines and not on the fines themselves, the recalcitrant justices argued that the auditor had crossed a jurisdictional line. Rather than simply gathering data, the judges said, the auditor was actually pressuring them to explain why certain cases were dismissed without fines.

Privately, some justices grumble that they’re being used as pawns by a Commissioners Court in search of badly needed income. The draft budget hints at the need for a two- to three-cent property tax increase to keep the county fully afloat during the 1994-95 budget year. And since the commissioners want to avoid a politically unpopular tax hike, the JPs claim, they’re searching for nontraditional methods of raising revenues — nontraditional methods such as bumping up the number of fines collected by justices of the peace.

One JP, who declined to be identified, is blunt in his accusations against the commissioners. There’s a lot of anger in the justice courts, he claims, and much of it comes as a result of ticket-happy deputy sheriffs. The commissioners hired an extra 100 deputies last year, he says, and sent them out to paper the streets. But the commissioners neglected to add the court personnel who could process the resulting flood of citations. Now, he says, “people are waiting in long lines, [and the auditors] want us to explain why a case here or a case there was dismissed.

“Our collection of monies is incidental to our roles as a judge. If we make money for the county, that’s fine and good. But that’s never been, either under state statute or the Constitution, the primary function of justice courts. At some point, citizens are going to get angry about all those tickets being written.”

Justice of the Peace David Patronella, who presides over the busiest downtown justice court, agrees that the courts are burdened by the officers’ ambitious ticket-writing habits. If the situation isn’t rectified, he warns, some courts will be forced to shut down. Each traffic ticket, he says, means a lot of work for the judicial system. The ticket has to be received by the court, put on the docket, given a case number, entered into the computer and placed in a file; then receipts are issued for any fines received, court dates are set, individuals are called to court, heard in court and, if they plead not guilty, tried in court.

“What [the commissioners] have done is pump in 100,000 new cases without additional support staff,” says Patronella. “Then young auditors question our judicial discretion. It makes no sense. Our justices have been so swamped and are on such overload, we expect our three largest courts to literally shut down in June under the weight of the additional tickets. No further cases will be able to be filed if that happens.”

Patronella, who allowed his court to undergo the controversial audit, says the JPs are concerned that few people in county government really understand the judicial system. Some JPs, he says, have refused to allow their courts to be audited out of fear that they’ll be called on the carpet for not handing out enough fines. The concern, says Patronella, is that the Commissioners Court will pore over the audit results, then come to a judge and say, in Patronella’s words, “Well, judge, if you found more people guilty then you would have more money coming in, or if you didn’t dismiss this percentage of cases then we wouldn’t lose this money.”

“We have a standard in American jurisprudence that a person is innocent until proven guilty,” Patronella adds. “I want to make sure [the commissioners] understand that.