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Monday, January 18, 2010

Ind. Courts - Part II of "Indiana courts moving toward unified records system"

Part I appeared in the ILB on Jan. 4, 2010. The entry quoted at length from Harold J. Adams' LCJ story that began:

After nine years and $51 million spent, Indiana is progressing toward a statewide computer system that may eventually connect the records of all the state's 401 courts to each other, other state agencies and the public.
It described the tension between the Supreme Court's efforts to install its Odyssey case management system (CMS) in eventually all 92 counties, and the private company, CSI Computer Systems of Fishers:
CSI now handles court records for 51 Indiana counties and is trying to expand. It was among the unsuccessful bidders for the statewide contract awarded in 2005 to Tyler Technologies of Plano, Texas. Tyler's Odyssey system, which began deploying with a pilot project in 2007, is now in 15 Indiana counties.
At the end of the entry I provided some background information about intra-county case management systems and inter-county networking of court docket information.

What could be called "Part I and a half" appeared in the ILB on Jan. 11th and was headed "What is the genesis of SB 60?." The entry quotes at length from the minutes of the Oct. 29, 2009 Sentencing Policy Committee, which led to the drafting and introduction of SB 60 into this year's session. SB 60 "Creates the judicial computer systems commission to evaluate court and law enforcement computer systems and the judicial technology and automation project.."

A good recap of many earlier postings can be found in this Oct. 13, 2009 ILB entry, which might be labeled "Part 0.5." The entry includes a link to the 2009 Senate regular session budget provision that, like this year's SB 60, tries to get a handle on the JTAC project.

Part II. Two interim legislative committee meetings addressed the JTAC project. The second was the Oct. 15, 2009 meeting of the Commission on Courts. Here are the official minutes of the Oct. 15th meeting.

I was able to attend the Oct. 15th meeting and was able to take fairly comprehensive notes of the testimony relating to the JTAC projects. If you have been following this issue, I urge you to read them closely. You will find discussion of JTAC's timetable for converting all 92 counties to Odyssey, and of the frustrations of many of the county's clerks.

You will notice in my notes that reference is made to action by the General Assembly last year that resulted, effective July 1, 2009, with 10% of the annual JTAC fees (resulting from the collection of $7.00 for every case filed in Indiana) going to the Attorney General, rather than JTAC. Mark Goodpaster of LSA's fiscal office, in answer to a question, said that would amount to $700,000 annually, 10% of the $7,000,000 per year JTAC had received. The amendatory language is a pp. 420-421 of HEA 1001 of the 2009 special session. Essentially it diverts to:

the homeowner protection unit account established by IC 4-6-12-9 one hundred percent (100%) of the automated record keeping fees collected under IC 33-37-5-21 with respect to actions resulting in the accused person entering into a pretrial diversion program agreement under IC 33-39-1-8 or a deferral program agreement under IC 34-28-5-1.

I have problems with computing how JTAC ends up with $7 million per year (or $7 million less $700,000) if the total number of cases filed each year is over 2 million -- $7 x 2 million = $14 million.* I'm sure there is an explanation, but I haven't found it. If I understood that, then maybe these other questions I have would also have clear answers:

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* IC 33-37-5-21 says " This section applies to all civil, criminal, infraction, and ordinance violation actions." This Table of the Court's shows 2,001,731 cases filed in 2008.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 18, 2010 03:33 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts