Suchergebnisse

This month's first meeting
of the Bossier Parish Police Jury featured a remarkable role reversal concerning
the issue of justice of the peace and constable pay, with a longtime advocate
of smaller government arguing for the opposite and a more recent advocate of
expansive government hinting at a tapping of the brakes on that – and rightly
so.

The Jury allows for general comments from the public
on any subject prior to tackling its business, and availing himself of that was
Republican Justice of the Peace Bill Shelton, who serves District 1 (there
are five districts total, 1 and 3-6 where two serve 3 and 6 to make for
seven officials; 2 is Bossier City with its own city court and marshal). He said
he spoke on behalf of all seven JPs and constables (each JP, which is elective,
also has a constable elected who carries out the JPs orders), who collectively wanted
a pay raise. Shelton observed that the parish paid out $300 a month to each, implying
a total taxpayer expense of $50,400 annually, and said these officers had to
pay for office, patrol, and enforcement expenses and didn't want to "go broke"
over performing their duties.

Thus, he argued (there was some confusion over the
exact amount) for salaries to double, pointing to other jurisdictions that paid
much higher and noting that this amount hadn't increased in at least two
decades. This he mentioned in the context of upcoming budgetary discussions by
the Jury.

Joining him to explain further was Republican
Constable Robert Wright, from his district. Wright is a longtime political activist
and officeholder within the GOP who has consistently championed limited
government. Yet he joined with Shelton in publicly backing increased government
spending on this occasion, and actually argued for a boost to $1,000 monthly.
Wright also mentioned the parish's bunch wanted to set up a litter court to
enforce and prosecute those violations, and cited as an example of an expense
incurred in that as driving around looking for obvious large accumulations of
trash on public property.

Understanding the appropriateness of this request
starts with how these offices are financed. Statute delivers five revenue
streams to JPs. One mandates
that a parish pay no less than $75 per month, with an unlimited ceiling. Another says the state
must match that, up to $120, which was increased from $100 only last year. Still another
empowers JPs to collect "customary" fees for weddings. Yet another lets
him collect "customary" fees for acting as a notary with limited powers. Finally, a JP may charge
fees with maximums set by law for 32 different civil actions.

Additionally, the law allows a JP along
with his constable to set up a litter enforcement structure – what Wright had
brought up – concurrent with the parish which may be heard in a JP court with
consent of the parish, with a limited range of fines and
punishments but with summons and services available under the existing fee
schedule. A parish also may reimburse JPs and constables, the latter of whom
also collects half of the fines from civil actions, for required training which
typically runs under $100 annually.

This open-ended financing structure can create
problems. Most
notoriously, a few years ago a JP and constable in Jefferson Parish – which
bent over backwards to give them hefty salaries and a subsidized workplace –
lived large on hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenues, illegally obtained.

However, at the same time, it makes sense that, if
parishes didn't go beyond the minimums set by law for salary or other
reimbursement, these officers should operate on a fee basis: the more they did,
the more they should collect, particularly as some do very little. And statute
even gives the justification for the one fixed element that does vary by
activity, the parish/state salary: "Justices of the peace and constables shall
receive no fees in criminal matters or in peace bond cases, but in lieu thereof
they shall receive such salaries as are fixed by the parish governing
authority and paid by the parish" (emphasis added).

Very little of with what a JP or constable concerns
themselves deals with criminal matters, and almost the entirety of what they do
consists of civil matters and petty ones at that. Any salary increase therefore
should come as a result of an increase in the volume of criminal matters that
they adjudicate. Expenses thereof probably are much higher than those dealing
with civil matters and a raise is justified if this increases significantly,
but if the overwhelming majority of activities deal with matters for which they
can assess fees, then any increase in performance of those things would be
taken care of by the existing fee structure; the more stuff they did, the more fees
they collect. As long as corruption is kept at bay, that model makes imminent
sense for an office where the amount of duties performed for it may vary wildly.

Shelton's spiel mentioned none of this. Originally,
he mentioned only the parish salary, not that of the state, nor brought up any
other of the revenue streams. And from subsequent questions by jurors, despite
the fact they turn over more than half a hundred thousand bucks a year to JPs
and constables, they had no clue as to any of this as well.

In that absence of knowledge about a parish function,
at least some jurors showed some curiosity about the subject. Republican John
Ed Jorden asked about whether fees financed the offices. Shelton admitted
they did collect fees but both he and Wright alleged they didn't offset much.

However, their required annual audit disclosures
to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor appears to contradict that assertion. Given
the small amounts that pass through these offices, unlike most government and
quasi-nongovernmental agencies that require official audits performed annually,
JPs and constables have the option of swearing out an official substitute.

For 2023,
Shelton's showed $9,280 in revenues – the monthly $300 from the parish and $120
from the state in salary, plus $4,240 in fees. For expenses, he listed $1,270
paid to Wright as constable, $100 in unspecified travel expenses, and $1,438
for office expenses, to total $2,808. Inferred from this, as he paid Wright
only for constable duties, that of his fees he collected $2,540 from his civil
duties and the remaining $1,700 came from officiating at weddings or performing
limited notarizations (he mentioned he performed around a couple of weddings a
month in the $75 range but didn't mention notarizing).

So, in fact Shelton has 90 percent of his total
expenses offset by just his fees minus weddings, which surely contributed to
his reported expenses. Including wedding/other fees, his revenues exceed his
expenses by about half – a very different picture than the one he painted to
the Jury. And, he admitted, in his decade in his position, he had heard perhaps
10 court cases – the kinds of work that the salary was designed to cover. This
equates to about $5,000 per court case that he now wishes to see go to at least
$10,000 each if the trend holds. Keep in mind in 2022 that the remaining "JP"
in the parish, Republican Bossier City Court Judge Santi Parks, for a salary from
Bossier City including benefits paid outside of his court's revenues received about
$50,000, in a year he concluded 1,379
criminal cases (and about 8,000 other matters).

(Wright hasn't filed a disclosure any more recently
than calendar year 2021.
That year, he reported in salary, fees from Shelton, and training reimbursement
$5,991.46 and no expenses.)

Following on, Republican Julianna
Parks – wife of Santi Parks – who particularly in other forums has gained
a reputation of viewing bigger and more powerful government favorably, then
asked more involved questions. She honed in on fees and getting people who used
JP services to pay for them. Shelton and Wright dismissed this as "impractical"
as well as asking the Legislature for increasing those fees – which isn't
actually the case, as almost annually bills come before the Legislature to do
just that with the last hike coming
only last year and JPs and constables in other parishes collect plenty of
fees assessed. She also asked about the civil duties that should occupy the
majority of his time, to which Shelton answered vaguely.

In all, the pair came off as poormouthing their situations
in a bid to expand what they want to do and have taxpayers pay them for it,
contrary to the intent of statute. Again, if Bossier JPs and constables could
point to escalating criminal case duties straining their finances, perhaps a
salary increase would be justified. But from their comments, it appears they
basically argued that Bossier JPs and constables deserved an increase just
because of inflation and everybody else has done it, with no scrutiny as to
whether the amount they receive at present is justified under statute, and as
they intended to expand their duties into litter enforcement.

To summarize, given the statistics, Bossier JPs
and constables appear paid plenty for the criminal justice duties they perform.
Given their reports, their fees from civil duties appear more than adequate to
cover their costs. And the law provides an avenue for them to finance a litter
court from an existing fine structure. Nobody's going to go broke here (and if
they don't like the current arrangement, nobody is forcing them to run for or
stay in their respective offices).

There's no adequate justification here for Bossier
jurors to give their JPs and constables carte blanche over an extra $300-700
monthly from taxpayers when JPs and constables have made zero case for how taxpayers
would benefit from these amounts of extra largesse headed to – or even justifying
the current salaries of – themselves, considering the actual and intended scope
of their duties and any potential expansion of these. Jurors should reject the
idea out of hand.

Die Berichte, mit denen Museen Rechenschaft über die Effektivität von Ausstellungen ablegen, werden zumeist von Beratern erstellt, die sich darauf spezialisieren, mit Hilfe von wissenschaftlichen Methoden Ausstellungen zu evaluieren und Vorschläge zu machen, um deren Effektivität zu erhöhen. Der Beitrag ist im Lichte des zunehmenden Interesses der Besucherforschung und Ausstellungsevaluation an sozialwissenschaftlichen Methoden und Befunden entstanden. Anhand der Evaluation einer Installation in der Tate Britain in London stellen die Autoren die Beobachtungen dar, die sie mit Hilfe videobasierter Ethnografie in der Ausstellung gemacht haben. Dabei wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Relevanz diese Beobachtungen für das Design von (multi-)medialen Informations- und Interpretationsmedien für Museen haben. Im Rahmen der Ausstellung 'John Constable. The Great Landscapes' (2006) kommt ein neuartiges Computersystem zum Einsatz, das im letzten Raum der Ausstellung installiert ist. Die Ausstellung zeigt einige der mehr als zwei Meter breiten und mehr als ein Meter hohen als 'Six Footer' bekannten Landschaftsgemälde des britischen Malers J. Constable (1776-1837). Neben Constables originalen Gemälden werden Skizzen gezeigt, die den Six Footers zugrunde liegen. Ziel der Kuratoren ist es, Besuchern einige Techniken Constables durch Röntgenbilder näher zu bringen. Indem sie die Gemälde mit den Skizzen direkt vergleichen können, sollen sie die Entwicklung der Kunstwerke nachvollziehen können. Die Ausführungen schließen mit einer kurzen Reflexion der Beziehungen zwischen Evaluationen von Ausstellungen und akademischer Forschung. (ICG2)

This book, first published in 1967, examines the implications of a now-forgotten minor riot that occurred in 1833, a turbulent year with the working classes striving for recognition in a changing social order. A political meeting in London had been declared illegal, the police breaking up the crowd were met with resistance, and in the fracas a policeman was stabbed to death. A bad-tempered inquest followed, at which the jury returned a verdict of justified killing - for which a section of the public hailed them as heroes. This analysis sets the crime and verdict against the political protests of the time.

The accountability of the police has become momentarily as live a political issue in Britain as it has always been in the United States. The relationship implied in the term accountability is essentially one of agency, and presupposes the demonstrability and regularity of the relationship. In both the United States and Britain, the corporate accountability of the police has come to be exercised and articulated through chiefs of police and chief constables. In the United States, however, the professional autonomy of chiefs of police owes much to a strategy of reform designed to free urban police forces from the corrupting influence of partisan politics, whereas in Britain what has been called the 'uncontrolled authority' of chief constables is the result of an oblique approach to the entire question of the accountability of the police. While rejecting 'politics' chief constables are assuming a more prominent politico-administrative role and are endeavouring to establish a more direct relationship with public opinion.