Sausage judicial bill still worth signing

Exemplifying to the extreme the old aphorism that legislating is like making sausage, reforming the bloated Orleans Parish district court system ended up half-complete with a plethora of compromises made by reformers.

SB 217 by the busy Republican state Sen. Jay Morris intended to right-size courts in Orleans. Even as it has only a little over 8 percent of the state’s population, a study determined the district had too many judges compared to others in the state, and this directly affected taxpayers statewide as they footed the bill for this bloat.

But with the history of Orleans that built in favoritism in its treatment – most of this a product of many decades past when it represented a much higher proportion of the state’s residents (over 20 percent in 1900, for example, and with New Orleans having more than twice as many people as all other municipalities combined) and commercial activity – this would require substantial dismantling, and right off the bat a concession needed making. Originally, the bill intended only to reduce a couple of seats of civil district courts, rather than all.

There’s no reason Orleans should have a separate civil court system, unique in the state. By the latest statistics, the 15^th (mostly Lafayette) and 19^th (East Baton Rouge, which also is the state capital and has about 75,000 more people) had more civil cases, and two other north shore districts and Jefferson had almost as many, yet there isn’t a large separate slate of judges to handle these. And, it could be argued that Orleans has as many cases as it does precisely because of the separate civil track, providing slack capacity that attracts more cases than otherwise would be filed. As well, in recent years both the civil sheriff and (this session) clerk of criminal court positions were abolished, with the latter merged into the civil court’s clerk (another bill brought by Morris).

Yet demolishing that entire structure might have been politically impossible – especially with tort lawyers who have a vested interest in keeping a dedicated vehicle for their claims, specious or otherwise – so this first dilution began at the start. And it kept building through the process.

Eventually, wending through both chambers and a conference committee, any reduction at all for civil spots got spiked and reductions in criminal court spots, subject to a future study that would have been issued by the spring of 2028, that would have happened through attrition became a reduction of three utilizing a last-in, first-out rubric absent attrition. The bill did retain reductions to juvenile and traffic courts, by attrition preferably.

However, the worst came at the end. In the conference committee process, for reasons as yet unrevealed, the LIFO ordering was junked in order to retain a judge related to Democrat state Sen. Gary Carter (who is related to several elected officials in Orleans) while dispensing with another held in high esteem by other members of the delegation. Finger-pointing abounded at this turn of events, including at GOP Gov. Jeff Landry who expressed shock and disappointment at that and said he had nothing to do with this.

Now, the bill heads to him. Flawed as it is, at least it commences a necessary overhaul of this sink and he should sign it. And then reformers need to revisit the question to make more progress from this mess as soon as possible.