The vast majority of Louisianans
who live in a municipality do so where there exists a city court, as this was required
of those with populations greater than 5,000 prior to the latest 1974
Constitution. But where one is not established a municipal corporation up to
1974 was required to have a mayor’s court; since then, city courts cannot be
established and so new municipalities either must have established a mayor’s
court or a parish-wide court (as in a
few instances) by the Legislature.
A city court has an elected judge
presiding. By contrast, in a mayor’s court, the mayor acts as the judicial
officer over a limited jurisdiction of cases over the certain laws and city ordinances,
within the city boundaries. It thereby merges executive and judicial powers
into one officer, and this arrangement, found in very few other states, federal
courts have determined is of dubious constitutionality.
That as chief executive the mayor
has fiscal responsibilities but as judicial officer has the power to generate
revenues through fines from rendering guilty verdicts serves as the most
questionable aspect of the dual roles. While in decades gone by it made some
sense that, in an environment of limited transportation and information-sharing,
a local magistrate who would know many of the accused could distribute justice
in an efficient and even optimal fashion, these advantages have dissipated over
time.
Still, except for the roughly two
dozen municipalities operating under special legislative charters (all having
populations fewer than 15,000), about three dozen others with some kind of home
rule charter or consolidated governance (most of them with more than 10,000
residents), and a handful of others, mayor’s courts continue to operate. Most of
these municipalities are small, but notable large exceptions are Central,
Gretna, and Kenner.
Yet while a number of mayors have
this judicial power, some of these don’t have direct control over their own
cities’ law enforcement. That’s because the same act that establishes mayor’s
courts also creates as a default for a municipality an elected police chief
position. However, because of a large number of exceptions written in by
statute to abolish the position, of many municipalities exercising the option under
the law to make the job appointive, or because of adoption of a home rule or existence
of a special legislative charter that says otherwise, only about a dozen or so
of these positions continue as elective.
This anachronism from the late
nineteenth century era of distrust of centralized government power today can be
problematic for coherent policy-making. Mayors may lead alderman or city
councils in budgeting for police operations, but the chief, who could be a
political opponent of the mayor, runs all other aspects of law enforcement in
the municipality (although, here again, state laws carves out some specific
exceptions for some).
Interestingly, the politics of
traffic enforcement illustrates the problems of mayors having too much judicial
power and/or too little executive power. In Woodworth,
controversy has spread over the mayor too aggressively, if not
discriminatorily, using his court as a funding mechanism for city government,
while in Washington
a feud has broken out between the separately elected mayor and police chief
over use of the police as a revenue-generating mechanism. Together, the pair of
speed traps illustrate the shortcomings of these relics of governing theory
from the past.
Thus, next year the Legislature
should initiate reform. The guiding regulation, the Lawrason Act of 1898, should
be amended to eliminate elective police chiefs (and as a matter of housekeeping
all the exceptions regarding relations between them and mayors) to make all such
positions appointive. This would not affect those municipalities operating under
special acts or charters, so to extend this each separate act would have to be
amended, and then the Constitution
amended to do the same for those few instances such as Washington where a
charter mandates elective police chief (although the municipality’s citizens
may initiate their own charter changes).
Also the Act should be altered to
abolish mayor’s courts. As the Constitution disallows establishments of city
courts, a few can be folded into existing parish courts while the remaining
several dozen can be served by district courts, as a handful of exceptions
already are by law. They may some considerable resistance from mayors for this
one, for some even in relatively small towns get paid a handsome sum (for
example, Tallulah’s
mayor makes $65,500 annually, or over $9 a resident) and running a mayor’s
court can be used as a justification for such high pay. By removing their
judicial duties, they might see this as a prelude to lowering their salaries to
a level much more congruent with the actual nature of their duties.
Keeping executive power together and
not fusing it with judicial power creates more efficient government less likely
to serve its needs rather than the people’s. Elimination of mayor’s courts and
elective police chiefs achieves both of these objectives.
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