The White River Valley Herald

Justice Over Internet

Side Judges, Court Adjust To Pandemic, Plan County Budget


Orange County Assistant Judge Joyce McKeeman presents the proposed 2021-2022 budget at a virtual preliminary budget hearing on Monday, Dec. 14, via the teleconference platform Webex, while her colleague Assistant Judge Laurel Mackin, Sheriff Bill Bohnyak, and sheriff’s deputy Scott Clouatre listen in. During the pandemic, nearly all court proceedings have taken place over this same web platform.

Orange County Assistant Judge Joyce McKeeman presents the proposed 2021-2022 budget at a virtual preliminary budget hearing on Monday, Dec. 14, via the teleconference platform Webex, while her colleague Assistant Judge Laurel Mackin, Sheriff Bill Bohnyak, and sheriff’s deputy Scott Clouatre listen in. During the pandemic, nearly all court proceedings have taken place over this same web platform.

A year ago, Vermont’s courthouses were a far cry from being remotely accessible—but with a push of the pandemic, and help from federal CARES Act funds, courthouses across the state have shifted to almost entirely online proceedings over the last few months.

In Orange County, Assistant Judge Joyce McKeeman said the quick pivot to remote hearings was impressive to see—although she added there are a few steps left that will optimize the new virtual formats, she said. McKeeman is one of Orange County’s two elected assistant judges, who have a versatile role that involves assisting with family court cases and building the county budget, among other things.

Many court proceedings were quickly moved to the web platform Cisco Webex. That platform has options for both video and phone-based calls, and allows for easy recording of court proceedings— a new requirement, McKeeman said.

While all the software has been in place across the state for many months at this point, there are still some hardware pieces that will make remote hearings even easier, once installed, she said.

Rarely considered to be on the leading edge of technology, Orange County Superior Court, at left, has undertaken technology adaptations that allow for remote hearings and maintain public access to proceedings. (Herald File / Dylan Kelley)

Rarely considered to be on the leading edge of technology, Orange County Superior Court, at left, has undertaken technology adaptations that allow for remote hearings and maintain public access to proceedings. (Herald File / Dylan Kelley)

For example, the state has plans to install large monitors in each courtroom, so that judges will be able to see people attending court proceedings on larger screens. Even without those big screens, Webex works well, McKeeman posited. She hears cases from her chambers and, thanks to a new headset, can easily navigate “exhibits” (documents produced as evidence in a court proceedings) that have been emailed ahead of time.

“We’ve even had witnesses appear,” she noted.

But a few types of court proceedings have not moved as easily to the online platform.

When it comes to “judicial bureau” hearings, which are mainly related to contested traffic tickets, it’s common practice for the officer who issued the citation and the defendant to reach an agreement without the judge present, she said.

But that’s difficult to facilitate via Webex, so instead judicial bureau proceedings happen largely over conference call these days.

McKeeman, in Chelsea courthouse, is joined on the call by the defendant wherever they are (usually at home or work), and the law enforcement officer who issued the citation calls in, too

“Sometimes [the officer is] literally are on the side of the road calling in from a cell phone,” said McKeeman.

In fact, these judicial bureau proceedings have kept McKeeman busier than usual over the last few months— in part because the hearings were on hold from March 16 through June 15, creating a backlog of roughly 6,000 judicial bureau cases.

Since June, in addition to her regular assistant judge duties, McKeeman has been hearing judicial bureau cases two, and sometimes three, days a week—an increase from the couple of days a month she would have spent hearing the same cases pre-pandemic.

But that bigger demand on time isn’t just because of the backlog of cases that built up from March to June, she explained. The biggest determiner in how many judicial bureau cases she can handle has been the lifting of a restriction on which counties she could hear cases in, she said.

Before the pandemic, she was only allowed to hear cases in specific counties, and would have to physically travel to the courthouse in each county to hear cases. Logistically, that meant she could only hear cases on days when her schedule lined up with that of the officers in any given county who had issued citations.

But with rule changes related to the pandemic response, assistant judges who have been through the judicial bureau training can now hear cases from any county in the state—and since the hearings are now done via conference call, the schedules of law enforcement officers and assistant judges are much easier to align.

“I think the defendants like it,” said McKeeman hesitatingly. “I mean, imagine you’re up in Stowe skiing and you get a ticket and you’re from Boston,” and need to go to court to resolve it, she said.

Lamoille County’s courthouse is in Hyde Park, so the person who received the ticket would have had to drive up there, to be physically present for the hearing—but now it can happen over the phone, McKeeman said.

Overall she thinks the switch to remote judicial bureau cases has been a positive one—and expects at least some aspects of remote hearings will remain even after the pandemic.

Since March, criminal jury trials have been on pause, McKeeman said.

“To even get back to anything like normal the courthouses have to be safe for people to come in,” she emphasized— and right now, with current COVID-19 guidelines, getting a jury into the courthouse just doesn’t seem safe.

But, she said, the assistant judges in each county have been working closely with a state-hired engineer to get courthouses safe enough for jury trials to resume.

Through their work with the engineer, McKeeman and Laurel Mackin, the other assistant judge for Orange County, found that before either of them was elected, other assistant judges had worked to get a new ventilation system installed in the courthouse.

McKeeman said that the ventilation system, while not running perfectly, means that the Orange County Courthouse will be one of the first that’s able to resume criminal jury trials, as soon as state guidelines allow for that.

Building a Budget

Although state, municipal, and many other budgets have suffered this year, McKeeman said the Orange County budget has been largely unaffected by the ongoing pandemic.

The county budget primarily funds the sheriff’s department and maintenance expenses for the county-owned buildings. The biggest impact of the pandemic on the budget, was increasing the part-time facilities worker position to a full time one, said McKeeman.

That was done in order to make sure Mike Gunn, the facilities worker, had enough time to clean the courthouse following the state’s cleaning guidelines, she said.

Over the last couple of years, a county-owned building had caused some concern to residents, because of the tax burden it added to the budget, but as the building at 3 Court Street is now occupied by the nonprofit Orange County Restorative Justice Center, McKeeman said the county no longer needs to pay taxes on it.

At the preliminary budget hearing earlier this month, Sheriff Bill Bohnyak requested an increase for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department payroll reimbursement line item to $28,080—nearly doubled from this year’s $14,883— to raise the hourly wage of the department’s dispatchers.

“We’ve been losing dispatchers because of the rate of pay,” said Bohnyak. “People can’t survive on $10.90” per hour, he emphasized.

He hopes to raise the rate of pay significantly—currently most dispatchers for the county make about $15 per hour, but are still leaving frequently for higher-paying jobs, which he hopes to change by increasing wages.

The final Orange County budget hearing for the fiscal year 2021-2022 will be held remotely January 25, at 4:30, and is open to the public.