This month’s first meeting of the Bossier Parish Police Jury featured a remarkable role reversal concerning the issue of justice of the peace and constable pay, with a longtime advocate of smaller government arguing for the opposite and a more recent advocate of expansive government hinting at a tapping of the brakes on that – and rightly so.
The Jury allows for general comments from the public on any subject prior to tackling its business, and availing himself of that was Republican Justice of the Peace Bill Shelton, who serves District 1 (there are five districts total, 1 and 3-6 where two serve 3 and 6 to make for seven officials; 2 is Bossier City with its own city court and marshal). He said he spoke on behalf of all seven JPs and constables (each JP, which is elective, also has a constable elected who carries out the JPs orders), who collectively wanted a pay raise. Shelton observed that the parish paid out $300 a month to each, implying a total taxpayer expense of $50,400 annually, and said these officers had to pay for office, patrol, and enforcement expenses and didn’t want to “go broke” over performing their duties.
Thus, he argued (there was some confusion over the exact amount) for salaries to double, pointing to other jurisdictions that paid much higher and noting that this amount hadn’t increased in at least two decades. This he mentioned in the context of upcoming budgetary discussions by the Jury.
Joining him to explain further was Republican Constable Robert Wright, from his district. Wright is a longtime political activist and officeholder within the GOP who has consistently championed limited government. Yet he joined with Shelton in publicly backing increased government spending on this occasion, and actually argued for a boost to $1,000 monthly. Wright also mentioned the parish’s bunch wanted to set up a litter court to enforce and prosecute those violations, and cited as an example of an expense incurred in that as driving around looking for obvious large accumulations of trash on public property.
Understanding the appropriateness of this request starts with how these offices are financed. Statute delivers five revenue streams to JPs. One mandates that a parish pay no less than $75 per month, with an unlimited ceiling. Another says the state must match that, up to $120, which was increased from $100 only last year. Still another empowers JPs to collect “customary” fees for weddings. Yet another lets him collect “customary” fees for acting as a notary with limited powers. Finally, a JP may charge fees with maximums set by law for 32 different civil actions.
Additionally, the law allows a JP along with his constable to set up a litter enforcement structure – what Wright had brought up – concurrent with the parish which may be heard in a JP court with consent of the parish, with a limited range of fines and punishments but with summons and services available under the existing fee schedule. A parish also may reimburse JPs and constables, the latter of whom also collects half of the fines from civil actions, for required training which typically runs under $100 annually.
This open-ended financing structure can create problems. Most notoriously, a few years ago a JP and constable in Jefferson Parish – which bent over backwards to give them hefty salaries and a subsidized workplace – lived large on hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenues, illegally obtained.
However, at the same time, it makes sense that, if parishes didn’t go beyond the minimums set by law for salary or other reimbursement, these officers should operate on a fee basis: the more they did, the more they should collect, particularly as some do very little. And statute even gives the justification for the one fixed element that does vary by activity, the parish/state salary: “Justices of the peace and constables shall receive no fees in criminal matters or in peace bond cases, but in lieu thereof they shall receive such salaries as are fixed by the parish governing authority and paid by the parish” (emphasis added).
Very little of with what a JP or constable concerns themselves deals with criminal matters, and almost the entirety of what they do consists of civil matters and petty ones at that. Any salary increase therefore should come as a result of an increase in the volume of criminal matters that they adjudicate. Expenses thereof probably are much higher than those dealing with civil matters and a raise is justified if this increases significantly, but if the overwhelming majority of activities deal with matters for which they can assess fees, then any increase in performance of those things would be taken care of by the existing fee structure; the more stuff they did, the more fees they collect. As long as corruption is kept at bay, that model makes imminent sense for an office where the amount of duties performed for it may vary wildly.
Shelton’s spiel mentioned none of this. Originally, he mentioned only the parish salary, not that of the state, nor brought up any other of the revenue streams. And from subsequent questions by jurors, despite the fact they turn over more than half a hundred thousand bucks a year to JPs and constables, they had no clue as to any of this as well.
In that absence of knowledge about a parish function, at least some jurors showed some curiosity about the subject. Republican John Ed Jorden asked about whether fees financed the offices. Shelton admitted they did collect fees but both he and Wright alleged they didn’t offset much.
However, their required annual audit disclosures to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor appears to contradict that assertion. Given the small amounts that pass through these offices, unlike most government and quasi-nongovernmental agencies that require official audits performed annually, JPs and constables have the option of swearing out an official substitute.
For 2023, Shelton’s showed $9,280 in revenues – the monthly $300 from the parish and $120 from the state in salary, plus $4,240 in fees. For expenses, he listed $1,270 paid to Wright as constable, $100 in unspecified travel expenses, and $1,438 for office expenses, to total $2,808. Inferred from this, as he paid Wright only for constable duties, that of his fees he collected $2,540 from his civil duties and the remaining $1,700 came from officiating at weddings or performing limited notarizations (he mentioned he performed around a couple of weddings a month in the $75 range but didn’t mention notarizing).
So, in fact Shelton has 90 percent of his total expenses offset by just his fees minus weddings, which surely contributed to his reported expenses. Including wedding/other fees, his revenues exceed his expenses by about half – a very different picture than the one he painted to the Jury. And, he admitted, in his decade in his position, he had heard perhaps 10 court cases – the kinds of work that the salary was designed to cover. This equates to about $5,000 per court case that he now wishes to see go to at least $10,000 each if the trend holds. Keep in mind in 2022 that the remaining “JP” in the parish, Republican Bossier City Court Judge Santi Parks, for a salary from Bossier City including benefits paid outside of his court’s revenues received about $50,000, in a year he concluded 1,379 criminal cases (and about 8,000 other matters).
(Wright hasn’t filed a disclosure any more recently than calendar year 2021. That year, he reported in salary, fees from Shelton, and training reimbursement $5,991.46 and no expenses.)
Following on, Republican Julianna Parks – wife of Santi Parks – who particularly in other forums has gained a reputation of viewing bigger and more powerful government favorably, then asked more involved questions. She honed in on fees and getting people who used JP services to pay for them. Shelton and Wright dismissed this as “impractical” as well as asking the Legislature for increasing those fees – which isn’t actually the case, as almost annually bills come before the Legislature to do just that with the last hike coming only last year and JPs and constables in other parishes collect plenty of fees assessed. She also asked about the civil duties that should occupy the majority of his time, to which Shelton answered vaguely.
In all, the pair came off as poormouthing their situations in a bid to expand what they want to do and have taxpayers pay them for it, contrary to the intent of statute. Again, if Bossier JPs and constables could point to escalating criminal case duties straining their finances, perhaps a salary increase would be justified. But from their comments, it appears they basically argued that Bossier JPs and constables deserved an increase just because of inflation and everybody else has done it, with no scrutiny as to whether the amount they receive at present is justified under statute, and as they intended to expand their duties into litter enforcement.
To summarize, given the statistics, Bossier JPs and constables appear paid plenty for the criminal justice duties they perform. Given their reports, their fees from civil duties appear more than adequate to cover their costs. And the law provides an avenue for them to finance a litter court from an existing fine structure. Nobody’s going to go broke here (and if they don’t like the current arrangement, nobody is forcing them to run for or stay in their respective offices).
There’s no adequate justification here for Bossier jurors to give their JPs and constables carte blanche over an extra $300-700 monthly from taxpayers when JPs and constables have made zero case for how taxpayers would benefit from these amounts of extra largesse headed to – or even justifying the current salaries of – themselves, considering the actual and intended scope of their duties and any potential expansion of these. Jurors should reject the idea out of hand.
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