Meet the ‘new’ judge

If that person overseeing hearings of the Boulder City Municipal Court looks familiar come Jan. 7, there is a good reason for that.

In their final meeting of 2023, the city council made some preliminary moves toward finding a new judge and accepted the current judge’s offer to serve in an interim role until a replacement is found.

When Victor Miller, the person who has — for four decades — served as both the elected Clark County justice of the peace overseeing a huge swath of county land that includes Boulder City, as well as serving as the appointed municipal judge for the city announced late last year that he intended to retire as judge and not seek an eighth term as justice of the peace, it set up a change that really can only be described as “generational.”

Originally appointed by the city in 1984, Miller was also one of only two people in BC history (since incorporation in 1960) to serve as municipal judge while not also being the elected justice of the peace. Miller was judge but not justice between 1984 and 1994.

The city has had nearly a year to arrange for a replacement, but it appears from statements made by staff as well as by council members last week, that not only is there no pool of candidates from which to choose a replacement, little thought has even been given to a process for finding candidates.

“So, I’ve got the letter where Judge Miller said basically he’s stepping down and is willing to serve as interim, what we would call a senior judge, starting Jan. 7 and then continue and for us to then have some time to figure out what the process would be to appoint a new judge. Is that accurate?” Mayor Joe Hardy asked of Acting City Manager Michael Mays.

Confirming that, Mays said, “So, we’d be looking for feedback on what you think that process should be and then we can bring back additional information if you have questions or want to get more information on processes of other jurisdictions, so that then you can decide how you want to move forward with the permanent position.”

Councilman Steve Walton expressed a desire to hear how other jurisdictions handle this issue.

“I’m interested in staff finding similarly-structured communities with the relationship between council and municipal judge so that we could see what models there might be out there for us to then use as the jumping-off point for further discussion,” Walton said.

Serving in her first meeting as a member of the council, Denise Ashurst said, “I agree with that. This hasn’t been done for 40 years, so we would definitely need maybe a template from whoever has done this before we make any further decisions.”

Councilwoman Cokie Booth took it even a step further.

“I’d like to look at some different models,” she said. “I’d like to see us interview the best and the brightest for the position but I don’t feel that I necessarily know what attorneys should know and what does a judge have to do. I don’t have that field of expertise, so I would like to look into the possibility of asking judges from Henderson or Las Vegas to come in and sit in on the interview and make recommendations for us. But I, too, would like to see us have some kind of feedback of how they do this and who does it and what kind of people could we expect to help us through this process.”

But finding a template may be harder than it looks like it should be. That is because when it comes to how the city determines who is going to be judge, Boulder City is very much an outlier.

State law actually says that judges should be elected. But because of a quirk involving the difference between a general statute and a special one, BC’s charter mandating the appointment of judge takes precedent. State law also allows municipalities to make the elected justice of the peace the “ex-officio” municipal judge. Which means that the city does not actually appoint an individual. It instead says that whoever fills the role of justice, is also judge by right.

Because, historically, the same person has been both justice and judge with only two exceptions in city history, many residents may be under the mistaken impression that it’s an automatic thing and assumed that Christopher Tilman, who was elected in June and will be sworn in as justice on Jan. 5, would be municipal judge by default.

But, back to the outlier thing. There are only two jurisdictions in Nevada where a judge is not either elected or appointed on an ex-officio basis, those being Boulder City and Yerington, a town of fewer than 4,000 souls in Lyon County.

Staff will come back to council on Jan. 14 with some information, but the decision will ultimately be made by the city council. In the meantime, Miller will continue to don the robe as judge while Tilman does the same as justice.

They will both work from the same courthouse. Salary for a senior judge such as Miller will be decided on Jan. 14, but the current classification schedule lists the salary for the Municipal Court judge — part time as $65,198-$121,828.