Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Occasional notes on politics, history, technology, architecture,
and the life of a county clerk

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Current entries

Monday, September 25, 2006, 1:53 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Justice Courts. Today's message to my staff.

Today's New York Times has a front-page story, based on a year-long investigation: Broken Bench: In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power.

The article documents the problems with New York State's system of "justice courts", conducted by Justices of the Peace in every township of the state. Most of the justices are not lawyers, and many seem to have no idea of legal principles or procedure. The authors write:

The examination found overwhelming evidence that decade after decade and up to this day, people have often been denied fundamental legal rights. Defendants have been jailed illegally. Others have been subjected to racial and sexual bigotry so explicit it seems to come from some other place and time. People have been denied the right to a trial, an impartial judge and the presumption of innocence.

The article gives many examples of all these things.

Michigan, too, had justices of the peace until the 1960s. Most townships elected four justices on the partisan ballot; they held voting seats on the township board. Just as in New York, few were lawyers. They heard misdemeanor cases and small civil suits. They were paid from the fines or fees they imposed. And some of the justice they dispensed wasn't very good.

The story about how JOPs were abolished has a lot to do with a little town called Webberville, in Ingham County's Leroy Township. Webberville's main street, Grand River Avenue, was then U.S. Highway 16, the main road from Detroit to Lansing before I-96 was built.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Webberville's main industry was its speed trap. Practically anyone who drove into Webberville unawares was stopped, hauled off to a Leroy Township justice of the peace, and fined. The four justices made a lot of money.

In 1961-62, a state constitutional convention was held in East Lansing. All the Con-Con delegates from Southeast Michigan had to drive through Webberville to get there.

No surprise that the constitution they wrote — still in effect today — not only abolished JOPs, but required all judges to be lawyers, and prohibited them from being paid the fines they imposed. JOPs and other municipal courts were replaced with district courts.

I hope that New York, at long last, can find its way to the kind of solution Michigan developed forty years ago.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. If you receive a notice, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, September 11, 2006, 11:20 pm

From the Clerk-Register: September 11. Today's message to my staff.

I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone of the terrorist attacks five years ago today. During that scary time, and afterwards, we heard many times that the world is different now, in many different ways.

Five years later, it's fair to say that a lot of things are back to pre-9/11 normal. We have long since stopped holding our breaths waiting for the next massive attack. Ordinary political bickering resumed some time ago.

But for us in local government, some of the changes wrought by 9/11 are enduring.

Our courthouse entrance is being reconstructed in response to security concerns. Our vital records office has been redefined as a gatekeeper for identity documents, and the regulations are becoming steadily more stringent. Birth certificates are now issued on serially numbered safety paper. When you renew your driver's license, you will soon have to present your birth certificate, and the Secretary of State's office will check the document's serial number with us to make sure it's genuine.

Many of the 9/11 hijackers had Virginia driver's licenses, because those were very easy to get in 2001. New regulations are intended to prevent any state from being as easygoing as Virginia, but the requirements affect all states, and are turning the driver's license into a de facto national ID card.

The courthouse will soon have built-in security gates at the entrance, replacing the lobby. Certainly we hope the changes will make it quicker and easier to handle crowds. And though I don't expect terrorists to show up at the corner of Main and Huron, the long history of violent attacks on judges by disappointed litigants should be enough to justify this.

The remaining recounts from the primary election were completed today. The only outcome which changed: the Augusta Township fire millage, which had been tied, PASSED by one vote.

Meanwhile, the "Stop-Overspending" proposal at the state level was ruled to have insufficient signatures. So, November's ballot is pretty well set.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. If I haven't met with you yet, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Tuesday, September 5, 2006, 2:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Fall Arrives. Today's message to my staff.

My daughter Sarah started third grade this morning. The weather was perfect, and there was a big crowd of parents, teachers, and kids for the annual flag-raising ceremony signifying the opening of school.

School now starts the day after Labor Day because of a new law which prohibits public schools from starting the school year any earlier. Many of us were critical of this action; it openly placed a higher value on the tourism industry than on education. But now that it's done, I can't complain about not having to gear up for the school year while August is still on the calendar. Starting after Labor Day aligns the school year with the seasons.

Of course I don't mean the traditional definition of the four seasons as starting and ending on the equinoxes (March 21 and September 21) and the solstices (December 21 and June 21). The season is usually in full swing by the time we arrive at the "technical" start date. Who thinks of December 19, say, as an "autumn" day, when we may have had weeks of cold and snow? June 21, our official first day of summer, was known to Shakespeare as "Midsummer".

Here in Michigan, the coldest quarter of the year, based on average temperature records, runs from December 8 to March 8. Extending that definition to have four seasons of equal length, fall would begin this Friday, September 8. That makes a certain amount of sense.

But in the lives of most people in our region, the seasons are bracketed by major holidays. Fall is from Labor Day to Thanksgiving; winter is from the day after Thanksgiving to Easter or Passover; spring is from then until Memorial Day; and summer runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Following that schedule, I can now say: Welcome to Fall!

A couple of additional notes:

The Day of Caring donation boxes are located in all of the Clerk/Register offices until this Friday. Our Department is sponsoring three agencies, Hope Clinic, Family Life Services and the Humane Society. The wish lists for each of these agencies is attached to the box and on the e-central site. When you donate, fill out the goldenrod sheet and send it to Karen Edman in Court Services. You will receive the 2006 Day of Caring T-shirt via interoffice mail.

Individual meetings with staff members resume this week. I've been here 20 months, but I have not yet had an opportunity to meet separately with all of the nonsupervisory staff members. You can set this up yourself. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Thursday, September 1, 2006, 2:47 pm

County Board/Sheriff Controversy Boiling Over. In the last few days, the fight over policing contracts has reached a new level of acrimony.

The county board and Administrator (Bob Guenzel) are acting to lay off deputies and reduce service to the three townships which have refused to sign service contracts, and the Sheriff (Dan Minzey) sued to stop this action. A hearing is scheduled in October.

Some news stories:

County officials deny sheriff's claims of retaliation (Ann Arbor News, August 22)
County to propose deputy layoffs: Sheriff decides to seek legal action against County (Ypsilanti Courier, August 24)
Sheriff sues county over deputy layoffs (Ann Arbor News, August 24)
Deputy layoffs put on hold (Ann Arbor News, August 31)

The following letter from the Sheriff was faxed to local governments:

August 30, 2006

To the Community Leaders of Washtenaw County:

Today I appeared before Monroe County Circuit Judge Costello seeking a temporary restraining order to block the County's threatened lay-off of Sheriff's employees. Although this is only the first step in a lengthy process, I am pleased to tell you that the outcome of today's hearing was an ageement that there will be no lay-offs at this time. On October 10 and 11th, we will return to court with Judge Costello hearing testimony on both sides of this matter.

Additionally, we are in the midst of another jail overcrowding emergency. In the past, when we reached this stage of the overcrowding process, we boarded inmates at other counties. I had planned to proceed with the out-county boarding later this week, utilizing the same jails as in the past, to reduce the jail population to the mandated count of 322. However, Mr. Guenzel has taken action to prevent any transfer of inmates by canceling boarding contracts with the counties we have been using for temporary housing.

Once again, I would surmise that this action is politically motivated, as the boarding contracts were cancelled the same day I filed suit against Mr. Guenzel and the Board of Commissioners to stop the impending lay-offs. You will, no doubt, be hearing much more about this issue — as the overcrowding emergency has run full course and we will be forced to lock our doors. As of September 6th, we will have no choice but to follow the law. According to statute, the Sheriff shall defer acceptance for incarceration in the general population of the county jail persons sentenced to or otherwise committed to the county jail for incarceration until the county jail overcrowding state of emergency is ended, except that the sheriff shall not defer acceptance for incarceration all persons under sentence for or charged with violent or assaultive crimes, sex offenses, escape from prison or jail, controlled substance offenses, or weapons offenses.

Jail overcrowding is a critical public safety issue. We need immediate, temporary solutions as well as a long-range plan. The Board of Commissioners and Mr. Guenzel have left me with no option but to take court action to protect the citizens of Washtenaw County. I am deeply concerned that jail overcrowding has become another political football. I will do everything in my power to keep the citizens of Washtenaw County safe.

Daniel J. Minzey, Sheriff

Yesterday, Bob Guenzel distributed the following letter in response:

It has come to my attention that Sheriff Dan Minzey has sent out a FAX/IMPORTANT NOTICE to area officials concerning the latest mandated emergency overcrowding at the Washtenaw County Jail.

I am attaching two Updates that I've written for employees in the last few days concerning this and other matters. I've also made them available on our public web site as it has become clear that Mr. Minzey has widened the scope of his inaccuracies.

The Updates speak for themselves, but I would like to add some information by way of refutation, and for more complete understanding of the breadth of these falsehoods and what I can only deem self-promotion at the expense of the truth.

For more than three years, and I think I can speak for the Board of Commissioners on this point, we have poured our hearts and souls into finding a way to increase the size of the jail, easing overcrowding. We have put forth dozens of ideas and initiatives, and at almost every juncture, Sheriff Dan Minzey, the person one would think could gain most from our efforts, has been either a non-participant or an active opponent.

What is striking about the Sheriff's most recent message to local officials is that he is repudiating the one instance in which he was on the same page with the Board of Commissioners and with me by presenting a joint recommendation, passed as a Resolution at the June 7th, 2006 board meeting, to phase out the boarding of inmates at facilities in other counties.

The Sheriff made a strong presentation about facing the options of 1) Continuing to board out inmates as needed, 2) capping the number of boarded inmates; 3) ceasing immediately the boarding of inmates or 4) phasing the boarding of inmates. Sheriff Minzey gave his opinion that boarding inmates should be phased out with the end of terms for those then presently incarcerated at other jails.

Phasing out the practice of boarding out inmates was to be part of fixing the system of incarceration here in Washtenaw County. The Sheriff has been aware of many ideas and legal options that are now standard policy for other county jail facilities with similar overcrowding problems, and yet none has been implemented by this County.s Sheriff in anticipation of ending the boarding of inmates at external facilities, as he recommended in June.

"Good Time" — Allows for the reduction of jail time due to good conduct — almost every sheriff in the state of Michigan, approved by the Court a year ago — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
Work Release programs — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
The County's practice of holding all court-ordered misdemeanants — UNCHANGED.
Various methods of bond reduction at time of booking &mdash NOT IMPLEMENTED.
Expedition of prison-bound inmates who languish in the jail where they should no longer be after sentencing — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
A systematic review of offenders who may have warrants in other counties that could be sent to those counties or dismissed outright — NOT IMPLEMENTED.

Add to the list, Under Michigan Statutory Authority, the Sheriff has one major option to solve overcrowding that he refuses to take — a 30% reduction, across the board, of inmate [sentences] during an Overcrowding emergency.

Unfortunately, all that we're seeing during this emergency is more posturing and prevaricating from the Sheriff — and more time wasted.

Please feel free to contact me with your questions or concerns on this pressing matter.

Thanks,
Bob Guenzel

Right now, the county board is backing Bob Guenzel in this. But three of the board incumbents were defeated in the recent primary. Presumably the three townships are waiting for the new board to change course and restore the county subsidy for police services.

I attended previous workshops on jail overcrowding along with the sheriff, judges, commissioners and so on. Many different measures were discussed, but the only one which could provide instant relief was the sheriff's statutory authority to reduce sentences across the board by up to 30%.

General support was voiced around the room for this option for dealing with overcrowding emergencies, as opposed to the very costly outbedding of prisoners. I do not understand why Dan Minzey isn't using it.

Update, Sept 4: More background, and lively discussion, at Arbor Update: Sheriff's showdown: Minzey sticks to the fax.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

2002:
May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2003:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December