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The Complaint
After receiving complaints about haughty municipal judge behavior and illusive answers to questions about operations in the Municipal Court, the City Council asked the City Auditor to conduct a performance audit of the Judicial Division. The Judicial Division is comprised entirely of the City’s six judges.
Imagine if you will – you’re a Presiding Judge. No one has ever questioned your management practices or held you accountable for your operations; after all, you are a judge, a licensed attorney and a City Council appointee. Then one day the City Auditor’s Office shows up in your “chambers” asking you about service levels, staff size, and operating outcomes. We knew before we started fieldwork that this engagement was going to be challenging and would be met with resistance; however, we quickly found ourselves living David Ammons’
warning from Municipal Benchmarks, Assessing Local Performance and Establishing Community Standards: “Be careful talking about performance standards and performance measurement around municipal judges. Courts, they are likely to declare, are about due process and justice; they are not about revenues and efficiency. And who wants to argue with a judge?”
The judges continuously told us that the judicial function could not be audited. Judges were only accountable to a higher court and we couldn’t possibly understand their operations because we weren’t judges or even attorneys. Of course, we had heard it all before from managers of operations previously audited. However, we were confident that by following audit standards
we could assess the performance of the Judicial Division. After all, to again quote from the aforementioned David Ammons’ publication: “Courts are about justice and due process, but measures of effectiveness can be devised that are consistent with that mission. Furthermore, measures of efficiency need not be considered an affront to the court’s higher mission. Prompt – that is, efficient – judicial action backed by efficient support services is a worthy objective.”
Building Our Case
After discussions with City Council members, we focused our audit on appropriate judicial staff size. In this case, as in most, appropriate staffing is based on workloads, resources or work efforts, and desired outcomes. Given the lack of industry standards for municipal court operations and the lack of comparable courts with which to benchmark, the success of this audit hinged almost entirely upon our analysis of historic Judicial Division operating data.
Desired service levels for our municipal court had not been established; however, the data to measure past performance was available.
Based upon our research, we identified appropriate measures of workload, work effort and operating results as number of cases filed, judicial time in court, and number of days to case disposition, respectively. From existing management reports, we noted that the number of cases filed had steadily declined by over 50% during the past 20-year period, while the number of judges had increased from four to six. Using ACL to analyze case and courtroom databases, we determined that over the past 3 years the judges spent 30% of their available time (conservatively assuming that 100% of earned leave time was used) in the courtroom. The judges were unable to reasonably explain what they were doing during the 70% of their available time when they were not in court. Additionally, the number of days from the date a case was filed until the case was adjudicated was constant during this period.
To further understand judicial work efforts, we wanted to not only look at how long the judges were in the courtroom but when they were in the courtroom as well. In consultation with ACL, we developed a new ACL application to summarize time in court by time-of-day (in 30-minute increments) and day-of-week. The results were astounding. We found that most court time was concentrated in the morning hours; afternoon court time from Monday through Thursday was sparse; and court time on Fridays after 11:00 a.m. was non-existent. We found that afternoon court dockets were being routinely combined. This meant that some judges were hearing cases so that others had their afternoons free. When we inquired about the complete lack of court time on Friday afternoons we were told that cases were not scheduled for court during that time because it would conflict with the weekly judicial conference (a.k.a. staff meeting), which is held every Friday “afternoon at 11:00 a.m.” Again, the judges couldn’t reasonably explain why it took 30 man-hours (6 judges x 5 work hours) each week to discuss cases defined as “petty misdemeanors” by the National Center for State Courts.
Given that our conclusions regarding staff size were based on historical operating information and given the attacks on our credibility and competency by the judges, which included an attempted intervention by the Municipal Counselor (also a City Council appointee) and the Chief Prosecuting Attorney, more than ever we saw the need for a clear and simple delivery of findings and recommendations in the audit report. Through extensive and creative use of graphics we were able to effectively communicate our findings and build a foundation for our recommendations. An excerpt from one of the graphics used in our report is presented below. The Decision All of our recommendations have been or are in the process of being implemented. The number of judges has been reduced from six to four and the presiding judge was replaced. Court schedules have been expanded (when we suggested to the judges that citizens could be offered more convenient court times, such as after 5:00, we were told that judges “are professionals and don’t work after 5:00”). But most importantly, through performance measurement, accountability has been brought to the judicial function. As recommended, desired service levels have been defined, performance measures have been established, operating results are being reported regularly to the City Council, and a process for the judges to receive regular performance evaluations has been developed.
Lesa is an Audit Manager and Jim is Assistant City Auditor of the Oklahoma City Auditor’s Office. Jim is also a member of the LGAQ Editorial Board.
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