CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It’s been 20 years since the legislature reallocated county magistrates and there’s a bill under consideration that would do that again but this time base reallocation on population instead of caseload.
The bill, HB 2910, is in the possession of the House Judiciary Committee where it generated nearly an hour of discussion earlier this week. It’s now been sent to a subcommittee for discussion.
Del. Geoff Foster, R-Putnam, the bill’s lead sponsor, said the bill attempts to balance the coverage of magistrates after years of legislative feet-dragging.
“Specifically this is the House and Senate’s fault because we haven’t passed anything. We’ve been told to do this reallocation but haven’t done it,” Foster said.
The reallocation in the early 2000s came after the legislature had the state Supreme Court do a caseload study. The High Court used the the National Center for State Courts to do that study in 2001. The same organization did another caseload study for the state in 2015 but the legislature didn’t do anything with the information.
The legislature has over the years added magistrates in counties in individual bills but those bills have been few and far between.
Foster’s bill takes 2020 U.S. Census numbers and assigns one magistrate for every 16,500 residents in a county. A particular county would have no fewer than two magistrates no matter the county’s population.
Foster said the bill keeps the current number of magistrates at 158 but would reallocate them so some counties would lose a magistrate.
“We’re just trying to provide an even keel population—keeping the same number of magistrates but providing a fairer allocation,” Foster said.
Counties like Berkeley and Monongalia have grown in both population and caseload but magistrates haven’t been added. Foster said the two counties would benefit from the reallocation.
Del. Jonathan Pinson, R-Mason, said the sheriffs in his counties, Mason and Jackson, are concerned that, under the bill, an increase in cases and not population wouldn’t provide additional magistrates.
“Under the proposed legislation, if crime doubles in these counties and workloads double in these counties they will not have the opportunity to earn an additional magistrate,” Pinson said.
A representative of the state Supreme Court told the judiciary committee Monday the Court believes legislative action is needed for reallocation
Foster said the current allocation doesn’t meet the current needs.
“You’ve got 2,500 cases per magistrate in one county verses 224 cases per magistrate in another county. You’ve got a tenth of the workload being done by one magistrate for the same pay,” Foster said.
Del. Chris Pritt, R-Kanawha, said there’s obviously an imbalance in the current magistrate set up but he’s not sure the bill in its current form would remedy the situation.
“We have a problem and we need to fix it but we don’t have the information in front of us to be able to appropriately navigate this and figure out a solution,” Pritt said.
The bill says the reallocation would take place every 10 years following a U.S. Census.