Auburn will stand up its own municipal court for the first time since it entered into an interlocal agreement with King County 13 years ago for the latter to provide district court services to the city.

By a 5-2 vote on May 5, the Auburn City Council gave Mayor Nancy Backus the authority to terminate the 2013 agreement/contract.

Four King County District Court representatives had addressed the full council during the earlier public comment period, urging the city not to terminate the contract. They were Assistant Presiding Judge Corinna Harn, Chief Administrative Officer Othniel Palomino, South Division Presiding Judge Brian Todd, and Director of Operations Kimberly Howells.

As the comment period limits individual speakers to 3 minutes, each took turns at the lectern. Judge Harn explained how things got to this point.

In 2005, Harn recalled, King County and the district court’s cities that were contracting with it were unhappy with the contract. Ron Sims, King County Executive at the time, felt that the cities were getting services for which they were not paying, and the cities were unhappy because they felt they were paying for services they weren’t getting.

“There was probably some truth to both,” Harn conceded. “We were not providing services the cities were expecting, and the cities weren’t paying for services that we were providing. We worked very hard to have a very transparent contract where there was full-cost recovery and no more.”

Probation services

One thing that was not officially billed to the cities at the time, Harn said, was probation services. That was because in 2005 and for years afterward, defendants were paying enough money to cover the costs.

After the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that courts could no longer assess fines and costs against indigent defendants, the money that was collected to cover the costs of probation decreased. Today, the money is all but completely gone because most, though not all, defendants on probation are indigent.

Palomino noted that probation services are part of the full-cost recovery model that King County requires the district court to achieve. Given the recent budget issues the county is facing, he said, King County District Court examined all of its operations, and as soon as it realized it would no longer able to provide probation services to the cities and pay all the costs, it notified the cities immediately and called for a meeting in February.

“As part of this process,” Palomino said, “we decided that we needed to have conversations about how probation services would work. We didn’t want people to think there’d was some kind of bait-and-switch occurring. So we decided to give the city a 60-day window to decide whether it wanted to stay with the county. And we also wanted to work with our city partners on options, such as potentially having fewer things they would place on probation.

“We also wanted to make sure that we gave them enough time to figure out whether they wanted to bring those services inside the city or go ahead go ahead and work with us on a new cost basis. And we took that forward and have been having conversations with all the cities that are working with us.”

Auburn did not respond within the 60-day window.

Community Court

Judge Todd reminded the city how much it has wanted to be in a position to instill community values in what it does, and to tap those community resources it wants to use.

“Couple ways to get there,” Todd said. “First of all, you have a community court. It would be quite a shift for the city of Auburn and its council to have to move that to a municipal standard as opposed to using the King County District Court services.”

One option for probation, Todd said, could be for the city to create its own probation department.

Howells noted another fact about the future of community court.

“Currently, we don’t know if there are going to be any federal or state grants for community court. That is something else to consider. Right now that is something we pay for on our end out of a completely different fund,” Howells said.

Weighing the momentous impact of the decision at hand against the time constrictions on the representatives, Auburn City Councilmember Kate Baldwin suggested that more time be given to them to speak that evening.

“Given that we do have representatives of King County District Court here who’ve made it a priority to come and speak to us, and given the short time frame for reviewing and discussing the municipal court resolution, I would move to give them time to speak to us a little bit longer than the 3-minute limit for public comment,” Baldwin said

Councilmember Tracy Taylor disagreed.

“With all due respect,” Taylor said, “we were given the materials long before in a study session dating back to June 23 to review before having the vote this evening… I believe we have enough material before us to make an informed decision tonight.”