The Fulton County Commission voted this week to shift funding from the Magistrate Court’s budget to the Superior Court to make up for an increased workload.
The vote included transferring funding for three judges from the Magistrate Court budget to the Superior Court.
A second proposal approved by the commission asked the Georgia Legislature to empower judicial officers to handle felony cases. Currently, officers are limited to working on family law cases.
Commissioners Bob Ellis and Dana Barrett said their proposals were based on a Dec. 12 funding request from Chief Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville.
Commissioners Marvin Arrington Jr. and Natalie Hall voted against moving the funds. Arrington said moving the funds so that judicial officers could handle felony cases made no sense before legislative approval. Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman abstained.
In his funding request, Glanville alleged Chief Magistrate Cassandra Kirk said she would stop holding preliminary hearings for felony cases, which the Magistrate Court has provided Superior Court for the past 10 years.
Commissioners said the Magistrate Court had case closure rates well above 90 percent until this year when it dropped to 64 percent despite a 73% budget increase.
Kirk told the commission on Wednesday the caseload numbers were misleading. She said that 342,000 cases were filed in Magistrate Court from January 2019 through Dec. 11, 2023, and 89 percent of them have been closed. Magistrate judges just closed 2,500 cases in five days, she said.
Kirk said that she would never jeopardize court operations by cutting off services to the Superior Court. She asked commissioners to reject or at least postpone action until they got an unbiased assessment of the Magistrate Court’s operations.
Ellis suggested the issue has been exacerbated by Kirk’s “inability to work with others in the judicial system,” which has led to complaints about her.
Glanville said in his memo that a reduction or cu in assistance the Magistrate Court gives the Superior Court in felony cases would mean an increased workload for Superior Court judges, slow down court cases, and increase the Fulton County Jail population.
“Judge Glanville is specifically saying the actions announced by the chief magistrate will cause the jail population to grow,” Barrett said.
A proposal to ask the state legislature to return the chief magistrate to an appointed position rather than an elected one was postponed by the commission. Kirk has been a magistrate court judge since 2015 when the court became independent of the State Court.
Arrington called the proposal to return the magistrate judge position to appointed retaliation against Kirk, who appointed a court clerk, which was within her rights, without approval from the county.