By Michael Symons July 24, 2017 7:03 PM
There’s a growing sentiment to do something about tamping down use of municipal courts to generate fines to support a city or town’s budget.
Committees of the New Jersey State Bar Association and the state Supreme Court are each looking at the issue now, and a state Assembly committee recently did the same. Lawmakers floated ideas such as regionalization, making municipal courts a division of Superior Court and pooling all revenues from fines.
Paul Catanese, who was a judge for 20 years in South Brunswick, Lawrence and Hamilton, said judges need to be freed up to be independent, not worrying about whether they’ll be reappointed if they levy small or no fines in cases when that’s appropriate.
“There’s always this if not explicit this implicit sense that you need more revenues from the court,” said Catanese, who said a few years ago one Middlesex County town switched judges specifically because it wanted more revenue from court fines.
“Judges know what their job is,” Catanese said. “It’s to do individual justice in individual cases. That’s what our role is. It’s not our job to raise revenues for the town.”
Read More: Feel like NJ courts are just money-makers? Here are the ideas to change that | https://nj1015.com/feel-like-nj-courts-are-just-money-makers-here-are-the-ideas-to-change-that/?trackback=tsmclip
