Council OKs judge panel

If you didn’t read the agenda, you would have no idea that the city council took a vote on the issue of municipal judge in Boulder City.

No, the council did not make a decision on who will be named as judge. Victor Miller, who has been the municipal judge since 1984 and who retired in January, continues to serve as a senior judge in a sort of “acting” capacity for however long it takes for the council to name a replacement.

The vote Tuesday was just a part of the consent agenda so it was not even discussed. At issue was renewing a list of 18 people who are able to serve in Miller’s absence in a pro tempore situation. One of the people on that list is Christopher Tilman, who was elected as justice of the peace for the Boulder Township in June of last year and who was sworn in to that position in January.

In response to a question about where the process of naming a permanent successor to Miller stands, Acting City Manager Micheal Mays said in an email to the Review that, “Staff is still working to respond to the city council direction on developing options for the municipal court selection process.”

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.

While the city had nearly a year to arrange for a replacement between the time Miller announced his retirement and when that became official, it appears from statements made by council members on Dec. 17 that little thought had even been given to a process for finding candidates.

At that meeting, 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 — in this case that would be Tilman — 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 Tilman would be municipal judge by default.

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 residents in Lyon County.