Best Practices Committee

April 11, 2003

Call to Order

Judge Evan Sperline called the meeting to order at 9:35 a.m. The minutes of February 28, 2003 were entered into the record as written. A membership list which includes the terms for each committee member was distributed.

Review of Collection Information

Status of Legislation

Ms. Pettus reported that HB 1031 (“Revising rules for payment of traffic infraction and misdemeanor penalties”), HB 1514 (“Suspending accrual of interest for financial obligations during total confinement”), and HB 1836 (“Revising the interest rate applied to legal financial obligations”) are all dead.

SSB 5168 (“Authorizing reduction of interest on legal financial obligations”) is still alive. [The bill has since died in the house Rules Committee.] This bill relates to the interest on Superior Court legal financial obligations (LFO). The bill provides that the Court can reduce or waive the interest only as an incentive for the offender to meet their obligations. The Court cannot waive the interest on restitution but may reduce the interest on the restitution portion of the LFO if the principal of the restitution has been paid in full. The other part of the LFO interest can only be reduced or waived if the offender has shown a good faith effort by either making 24 consecutive monthly payments or paying the principal amount in full.

SB 6002 is a budget item, and is still in negotiation. The bill provides for the transfer of the responsibility for LFO billing from the Department of Corrections to AOC. AOC will contract with a vendor in Texas who prints the bills each month. County Clerks will assume the responsibility for collecting from offenders. Funds will be provided to the Clerks to mitigate the impact of the bill. The bill also provides for an additional FTE for AOC.

Collection Rates (courts of limited jurisdiction)

Dr. Glenn reviewed the handouts that were compiled from a survey done approximately a year ago and revenue collection data. The handouts included information on:

Practices with Respect to Collections

Collection Rates Over Time – by Payment History

Collection Rates at 60 Days from AR Open Date – by Fine Amount

Collection Rates at 180 Days from AR Open Date – by Fine Amount

Collection Rates at 2 Years from AR Open Date – by Fine Amount

Collection Rates Over Time for All Cases – by Payment History

Collection Rates Over Time for Cases with a Positive Payment Stream – by Payment History

It was observed that getting the account to a collection agency within 30 days of delinquency resulted in a higher collection percentage. The collection agency would have a better chance of having an accurate address and contact information.

Collection Rates (superior courts)

Dr. Glenn also provided information for superior courts collections in two tables:

Collection Rates Over Time for All Cases – by Payment History

Collection Rates Over Time for Cases with a Positive Payment Stream – by Payment History

Cost of Collection

Pierce County District Court was used as an example. There are approximately 6.6 FTEs involved in the ‘collection’ process. This includes setting up time pay accounts, receipting payments, managing accounts receivable, and dealing with the collection agency. Salaries and benefits for these FTEs equal $53,400 annually per staff person.

Pierce County District Court mails about 7,106 time pay statements per month. This is the equivalent of nearly $30,000 per year on postage.

In 2001, Pierce County District Courts collected approximately $9.2 million in revenue for all types of cases.

Court Performance Audits

BJA has discussed a proposed general rule about court performance audits. Prior to submission of the rule to the Supreme Court, the BJA would like this committee to put a framework together for how these performance audits would be conducted. The rule states:

“Pursuant to the provisions of RCW 2.56, and to ensure that minimum service levels for the administration of justice are in place, the Administrative Office of the Courts is directed to conduct performance audits of the courts under the authority of the Supreme Court in conformity with criteria and methods established by the Board for Judicial Administration.”

BJA is asking this committee to establish the criteria and methods.

Ms. Pettus has been working on a framework example—going back to the JEA Core Missions report, one of the core missions was juries. She built a potential audit structure based on jury management for courts around the state. She divided it into four practices of jury management: selection, orientation, term of service and juror utilization. (Please refer to the discussion paper on this subject from the February Best Practices meeting.)

The committee was concerned about looking at only efficient case processing and not taking into account the quality of justice. Speeding up case processing can end up sacrificing quality. The performance audit process should be steered in a way that will take into account areas other than how many cases can be done in a certain amount of time. If it is to be used to ask for more resources, the bar needs to be set higher, to show those resources are not available.

Are we looking at establishing the criteria and methods in a broad sense or in a more specific area? It is thought this committee would determine what a performance audit would look like within a focused area as it would take an immense amount of time and staff to audit every court in the state in numerous areas. Ms. Pettus suggested the committee focus on a specific area and audit similarly sized courts around the state. Then a report could be done specifying a Best Practice for that area.

There are three main questions the committee needs to address.

• What purposes do the audits serve?

• How do the audits fit into the mission of the Best Practices Committee?

• How should the audits be conducted? By court, focus area, groups of courts?

We should indicate that any kind of performance audit should consider positive outcomes, not necessarily recidivism, but other positive outcomes.

Areas that might be looked at include juror services, juror management, security, collection practices, and interpreter services.

It was noted that the state Auditor’s office mainly performs financial audits and would not necessarily have an outline for this committee use.

Judge Sperline concluded, he believed the committee should come up with a list of questions or a survey – a system that will be used to gather this information and to evaluate this information. BJA might also ask this committee to prioritize a function by function analysis, determining what is most critical.

Action Items

For the next meeting, Dr. Glenn was asked to take the most significant collection variables for collections and do a cluster analysis. These statistics, along with others he will provide, will be in a form that will enable the committee to generate a report to BJA.

To assist with communication among committee members, AOC will establish a listserv for the Best Practices Committee.

Judge Sperline suggested information be distributed by email, followed by a conference call to talk about where the committee is headed and to divide up responsibilities; then members will have a specific undertaking to bring to the next meeting.

Next Meeting

The meeting adjourned at 11:10 a.m. The next meeting will be held on Friday, June 6 at 9:00 a.m. (note earlier start time); it will again be held in Tacoma at the Court of Appeals.

Respectfully submitted,
Colleen Clark