Magistrate Court Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Office Of Drug Control Policy May Leave DHHR

Changes may be coming to the Office of Drug Control Policy if a House bill passes the West Virginia Legislature. House Bill 3306 would take the office away from the state Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) and give it new responsibilities.

Changes may be coming to the Office of Drug Control Policy if a House bill passes the West Virginia Legislature.

House Bill 3306 would take the office away from the state Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) and give it new responsibilities.

One new duty is the creation of a Sober Living Home Taskforce. According to state surveys, there is an influx of substance use disorder treatment and rehabilitation homes around the state. That growth has prompted a number of related bills and studies.

Del. Scot Heckert, R-Wood, believes the task force will aid in controlling and decreasing what he and others say are a growing number of non-certified, unregulated, sober living homes more focused on making a profit than helping people.

“It’s like Dodge City,” Heckert said. “They do what they want to. Our approval in the house for a task force to study them will help weed out the baddies.”

The bill also charges the office with developing a strategic plan to reduce the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse and smoking by at least 10 percent but it doesn’t set a deadline.

The legislation also deems the office must:

Oversee a school-based initiative that links schools with community-based agencies and health departments to implement school-based anti-drug and anti-tobacco programs; coordinate media campaigns designed to demonstrate the negative impact of substance use disorder, smoking and the increased risk of tobacco addiction and the development of other diseases.
Review Drug Enforcement Agency and the West Virginia scheduling of controlled substances and recommend changes that should be made based on data analysis.
Develop recommendations to improve communication between health care providers and their patients about the risks and benefits of opioid therapy for acute pain, improve the safety and effectiveness of pain treatment, and reduce the risks associated with long-term opioid therapy, including opioid use disorder and overdose.

The bill passed by a vote of 90 to 4 and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

W.Va. Magistrate Court Fines, Fees Can Now Be Paid Online

Payments can be made through a portal developed by the state Supreme Court's administrative office and West Virginia Interactive. Individuals can enter their case number and pay the amount owed with a credit or debit card without having to physically visit a court office, the Supreme Court said in a news release.

Fines, fees and costs accrued in West Virginia magistrate courts can now be paid online.

Payments can be made through a portal developed by the state Supreme Court’s administrative office and West Virginia Interactive. Individuals can enter their case number and pay the amount owed with a credit or debit card without having to physically visit a court office, the Supreme Court said in a news release.

There is a $2 fee for each transaction, which covers the cost of creating and operating the payment system.

“The online payment system will make it easier for West Virginians to pay their fines and court costs,” Chief Justice John Hutchison said. “Magistrate court funds many important things, including community corrections, law enforcement training, court security, courthouse improvements, and the per diem regional jail fee.”

Senators Work to Realigin Magistrate Court System

The study came as a companion to a bill approved during the 2013 legislative session. That bill gave pay raises to some magistrates in smaller counties.

Conducted by the National Center on State Courts, the results of the study were presented during January interim meetings, just a day before the legislative session began.

The NCSC presented three options to reduce the overall number of magistrates, keeping the current county based system, aligning it with the circuit courts, or aligning with the regional jail system.

In the originating bill, Senators proposed keeping the current county system in place, but reducing the overall number from 158 to 149 and reassigning some positions to counties that have larger workloads, like Berkeley and Kanawha.

Overall, the county system reduces the system by the least number of magistrates, but members of the committee tried to amend the bill Sunday evening by taking out any mention of reductions.

Sen. Bob Beach of Monongalia County attempted to make the change, but his amendment failed even after receiving bi-partisan support.

The bill in its original form was approved and moves to the Senate Finance Committee for further consideration.

Study Recommends Regional Magistrate Court System

Lawmakers were presented the final recommendations Tuesday from a national group that’s been studying the state’s magistrate court system for years.

The National Center for State Courts began the study in 2013 after lawmakers approved a pay increase for a small group of magistrates across the state. The study is focused on realigning the system so the number of magistrates in each county is based on the time spent on cases instead of the county’s population.

Cynthia Lee with the NCSC told members of the Joint Finance and Joint Judiciary Committees the time portion of casework is much more important to understanding what magistrates do than the number of cases they see. For example, she said a domestic violence case takes much longer to resolve than a traffic ticket.

That’s why the NCSC is suggesting the state realign magistrates based on what’s called a weighted workload system instead of the population based approach West Virginia takes now.

They also recommend the state change from a county based system to a more regional approach which would allow the sharing of magistrates across county lines.

Riley Barb, President of the state magistrates association, asked lawmakers to keep in mind the infrastructure challenges facing the state.

He said magistrates are supposed to provide local access to justice and lessening the number of them could make that more difficult in rural areas.

Lawmakers Receive Update on Magistrate Court Study

In between debating special session bills this week, lawmakers managed to have a few of their regularly scheduled interim meetings. During one of those meetings, legislators were updated by a national group on a study of the state’s magistrate system.

The study of the state’s magistrate system started following the 2013 legislative session during which lawmakers faced some debate over magistrate pay.

Currently, magistrates in the state are grouped into two classifications based on county population. It has been the practice of the state to compensate magistrates in larger counties at a higher level, under the assumption that they see more cases.

“There was a lot of discussion about the varying workloads of magistrates in different counties to try to make sure we were comparing apples to apples as compared to apples to oranges,” Senate Judiciary Chair Corey Palumbo said Tuesday.

As a condition of passing the salary increase for a small number of magistrates, lawmakers required a study into the court system. It is being conducted by The National Center for State Courts, a non-partisan, nonprofit research and consulting service based in Williamsburg, Virginia.

“Imagine that you have one county that has primarily traffic cases and one county that has primarily misdemeanor cases even though they both have the same case load. The county with more misdemeanor cases is going to have more work in its courts,” Cynthia Lee with the NCSC told lawmakers.

The NCSC has come up with their own method to determining the workload for magistrates and from that system, they can determine how many magistrates are necessary for a given county.

The system is called a weighted caseload model and is calculated using three factors:

case filings- the number of cases of a certain type filed each year
case weights- the number of minutes it takes a magistrate to complete a specific case
year value- the total number of minutes a magistrate has per year to do case work.

The model is focused on the types of cases, not necessarily the number filed and helps show the actual workload for magistrates, deputies and their clerks.

Of the 97 percent of magistrates who participated in the West Virginia study, they on average spent the most amount of time with mental health cases at 213 minutes per case, the least on traffic citations at about 4 minutes.

Juvenile abuse and neglect cases average at 91 minutes and personal safety, similar to domestic violence cases, averaged 80 minutes per case, both on the higher end of the time spectrum.

With the break down of time spent, the center then added up those minutes and divided by the year value. That gives them the specific number of magistrates that county needs to run its judicial system properly. With this method the center is determining how West Virginia should allocate its magistrates.

Lee said sharing magistrates across county lines could create efficiencies but it must be done in a way that preserves the integrity of the court system.

Lawmakers questioned if sharing magistrates between counties was legal in terms of election procedures, but Lee said that’s a determination legislators themselves will have to make.

Palumbo expects the final recommendations from the center to be available in the fall so the legislature can discuss those findings and possibly propose legislation to change the state’s magistrate system during the 2015 legislative session.