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Eugene councilors voted to add funding to establish the municipal court as a “court of record,” meaning fewer cases would be transferred to the the circuit court level.
The Eugene City Council on Monday voted to make the city’s Municipal Court a court of record, a change the city says will reduce a backlog of misdemeanor cases before the Lane County Circuit Court.
Councilors, without discussion, unanimously adopted an ordinance that amends the Eugene code to permanently preserve the court’s proceedings. The municipal court already keeps some basic records, but its capabilities will expand to include verbatim transcripts, likely through hiring court reporters and introducing audio recording, by April 1.
The estimated cost of the needed additional staff and materials ranges from $350,000 to $500,000 — funding requests that will be included in the summer supplemental budget. The Community Safety Payroll Tax could partially cover the costs, the council agenda states.
No one testified at the public hearing scheduled for the ordinance last week, where city attorney Kathryn Brotherton discussed the proposal.
Brotherton said the idea of becoming a court of record has been weighed for years, but was set aside in part because of the cost of in-room court reporters. But she later said technology has since decreased the costs associated with the change.
The ordinance follows the Jan. 1 enactment of a new state law, House Bill 2460, which allows defendants who have pleaded not guilty to state misdemeanors to transfer their cases from non-court-of-record municipal courts to circuit courts, which are the state-level courts in each county.
In Eugene, the legislation means people who have pleaded not guilty to Eugene code violations punishable with up to a year in jail — misdemeanors like trespassing, minor assaults, traffic violations and petty theft — can now take their cases to Lane County Circuit Court instead of facing prosecution by the city prosecutor’s office in municipal court.
“This is considered — maybe you’ve heard the term — a de novo trial, an entirely new trial,” Brotherton said. “It’s not based on the record because there is no record when you’re not a court of record.”
But the circuit court faces a “lack of resources and capacity” to receive the larger number of cases now eligible for transfer to its docket, according to the City Council agenda.
Eugene’s Community Court, which launched in 2016 and handles lower-level, nonviolent offenses, has also seen a “significant reduction” in caseload because those offenses are no longer being filed, being dismissed or reduced, or being resolved through settlements, to address the circuit court’s strained capacity, per the agenda.
As a court of record, staff expect the Community Court’s caseload to return to levels before HB 2460 went into effect.
Keeping the municipal court as a non-court of record risks the Community Court “essentially ceasing to exist,” and would set off a number of other impacts, like less prosecution of minor crimes and longer wait times.
When asked by Councilor Randy Groves, the city prosecutor said it wasn’t an overstatement to say that if the municipal court didn’t become a court of record, the city’s “whole restorative justice program will be torpedoed.”
“Eugene Municipal Court is often described as a high-volume court and essential part of our community’s community justice system,” Brotherton said.
The city of Springfield’s municipal court is expected to become a court of record by March 15, Brotherton said, after its council considers a similar ordinance. Many other cities in Oregon have municipal courts of record, including Florence, Beaverton, Lake Oswego and Milwaukie.
