PORT ANGELES — The pay-or-appear program touted by two-term Clallam County District Court 1 Judge Rick Porter has become a vigorously debated focal point in his re-election campaign.
Opponents Tim Davis, a state assistant attorney general based in Port Angeles, and Pam Lindquist, a Port Angeles lawyer, have portrayed the fine-payment program as imposing burdensome costs on cities that pay the county for jail services.
They’ve called it unfair to what they say are mostly indigent citizens who must pay the fines, appear in court to explain why they haven’t, or face a $150 arrest warrant — and potentially a night behind bars.
Porter has presented pay-or-appear as a revenue generator and an option for citizens to pay their debt to society in a way that allows them to avoid jail time and includes little involvement from collection agencies — which people often ignore.
“Offenders need to be held accountable,” Porter said. “That’s what this program is about.”
Primary ballots have been to more than 45,000 voters. To be counted, ballots must be returned or postmarked by Aug. 17.
Porter, Davis or Lindquist would automatically win the $141,710-a-year judgeship for the next four years if one wins more than 50 percent of the vote in countywide balloting for the position.
Otherwise, the top two vote-getters will advance to the Nov. 2 general election — with the debate over pay-or-appear likely continuing.
Debtors’ prison
Davis has suggested the county should consider going back to greater use of a collection agency and claimed Porter’s program has turned the county jail into a “debtors’ prison.”
“Pay-or-appear, I believe, imposes significant costs on the community, on the court system on the police, on the jails, on the cities,” Davis said last week.
“I think it wastes resources.”
Porter has said that Davis has yet to present specific data to support that conclusion.
Said Lindquist:
“A lot of people have this feeling that it has this inherent injustice to it.”
Responded Porter:
“There’s no viable alternative that’s been offered by either of my opponents.”
Davis said if elected, he will review the program, especially potential “hidden costs.” He would consider a broader use of a collection agency to collect fines.
Lindquist said that, if she’s elected, she would eliminate the program.
She would issue notice-and-show-cause orders to scofflaws to make them explain why they are not in compliance before issuing warrants for their arrests for disobeying the court.
They could serve jail time if they show “willful disobedience” of their sentence, she added.
Benefits of program
If pay-or-appear vanishes, Porter said, it also could mean the end of a court-generated $160,000 fund that pays for drug and alcohol and domestic violence treatment programs, because collection agencies are so notoriously ineffective.
It would also mean the end of about 1,500 hours of community service a month that includes working at the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society and Port Angeles Food Bank, Porter said.
The pay-or-appear program generates about $1 million a year from the $2.4 million in fines collected, while the remaining $1.4 million comes from those who pay their fines immediately upon sentencing.
Another $500,000 in unpaid fines from scofflaws who can’t be found is sent yearly to collection agency, with only 5 percent of the money, if that, returned to the county, Porter said.
All fines for traffic infractions and criminal misdemeanors issued by District Court 1 are paid through the pay-or-appear program.
Porter heard 11,352 cases in 2009, and 13,291 in 2008, between 90 percent and 95 percent of which resulted in fines.
Pay-or-appear
Under pay-or-appear, Porter asks fine-payers to pay $50 a month, though the amount can be lower if they request it, Porter said.
The agreement a fine-payer signs warns that a $150 arrest warrant could be issued the offender doesn’t pay the fine, do 10 hours of community service to work off a delinquent payment, appear at a monthly pay-or-appear hearing or make an arrangement with the court in lieu of attending a hearing.
“If they don’t do anything is when they get a warrant,” Porter said.
“The vast majority are not arrested for pay-or-appear,” Porter added.
“Somehow they ran afoul of the law to begin with.”
What happens at the pay-or-appear hearing?
“We have a little chat,” Porter said Thursday.
“The worst that can happen to them is that I might give them a lecture that they need to start being more responsible,” he said.
“The fact that they are there at least shows they are making some kind of effort.”
If a person pays the $150 warrant, then the offender must promise to see Porter, and after the hearing, the money is returned.
If the offender can’t pay the warrant upon arrest, he or she spends the night in jail and sees Porter the next morning to explain.
A person picked up on a Friday or Saturday could spend the weekend in the county jail.
That is up to jail authorities.
Porter has given the jail the option of releasing the person if he or she signs a pledge to appear in court the following week.
County Jail Superintendent Ron Sukert said that option is used when the jail is overcrowded.
Costs?
Porter estimated that about one person a day spends the night in jail on pay-or-appear warrants, incurring a cost of $70 per night in jail to the county and the cities of Port Angeles and Sequim, which pay for jail stays when residents of the cities are incarcerated.
Jail costs of pay-or-appear are about $25,000 to $30,000 annually for Port Angeles and Sequim, county Administrator Jim Jones said.
One full-time county employee administers the District Court 1 program at a cost of about $70,000 in salary and benefits, meaning the program costs about $100,000, Porter said.
That employee also administers the county Superior Court pay-or-appear program, but there are “a very small number” of people on the program because those who end up guilty in Superior Court usually go straight to prison, Jones said.
Civil cases between litigants don’t present pay-or-appear issues because fines are rarely involved, he added.
Since 2003
The program has generated a steady stream of revenue since 2003, Porter’s first year in office after he defeated longtime incumbent John Doherty and after Porter ran largely on a platform of rounding up delinquent fines, which had grown to $200,000 under Doherty’s system, which used a collection agency.
In addition to paying jail costs, as of 2010, cities also pay District Court a percentage of the cost of overall operations for the court.
It is based on a three-year rolling average of court costs. It’s recalculated every year and based on the average of the preceding three years.
“If they [cities] are responsible for 11 percent of the cases, they pay 11 percent of the court costs,” Jones said.
For Sequim, the combination of jail and overall District Court costs for the city wipes out what the city receives in fine proceeds, even with pay-or-appear, City Manager Steve Burkett said Friday.
City of Port Angeles officials have expressed the same concerns.
City and county officials on both sides of the debate say it’s difficult to track precisely what pay-or-appear costs the public because of booking and other procedures that take time but are difficult to analyze from a cost standpoint.
“I would ask the judge to be clear about what problem he is solving, to evaluate is it accomplishing his goals,” Burkett said.
“We are talking about justice, and that can’t always be measured with data.”
City Attorney Dennis Dickson, who tracks District Court costs for the city, told Peninsula Daily News on July 23 that there were almost 800 pay-or-appear arrest warrants issued in the first half of 2010, “more than any other categories of warrants,” and blamed the pay-or-appear program for increasing jail costs.
There were 1,652 Port Angeles city cases in 2007, compared with 2,563 in 2008 and 1,865 in 2009.
There were 515 Port Angeles cases through April, on pace to reach 1,545 by the end of the year.
Porter said Friday that a small fraction of the nearly 800 pay-or-appear warrants in Port Angeles will result in incarceration.
Dickson is also a volunteer for Davis’ campaign.
Court Administrator Keith Wills, who provided information for this story, is a volunteer for Porter’s campaign.
The loss of pay-or-appear would have sorry consequences for city finances, Porter contends.
“If we don’t have pay-or-appear, the city’s revenues from District Court will be cut in half and their expenses will remain the same.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
