By Maggie Lee / Staff

COUNTY AIMS NOT TO LOSE PRISONERS IN CYBERSPACE

Fulton County this week moved toward spending $11 million on a networked computer system that should at least keep innocent people out of jail.

"There were and still are examples of people being lost in the system with an order for release and held two years," testified trial lawyer Emmet Bondurant, "after courts have ruled in their favor."

Part of the problem is that Fulton's criminal justice agencies -- courts, police and so on -- generally track records using different computer systems.  The hub of the system is the Case Management Division, where paper and improvised manual processes act as the sole system switchboard.

The database that could have everyone talking the same language is the Court Justice Information System, CJIS.  The commission easily voted this week to start lining up financing and finding a CJIS vendor. The green flag to start work could come as early as May. 

There was no single vendor for all the modules the last time Fulton criminal justice looked at upgrades, according to county superior court Chief Judge Doris Downs. 

"The opportunity is here to provide confidence in the system," testified Edward Sohn of the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association, "whether a Fortune 500 company or an indigent defendant."

PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENTS IN THE MAIL, APPEALS BEGIN

Fulton property tax collections will certainly be down again, and the chief assessor is starting to talk numbers.

"This will be the third year in a row we lower residential values," said Chief Assessor Burt Manning.  Depending on the number of appeals, he's looking at reduction of about 6 percent of residential values overall, which would shave about three percent off the county's entire tax digest. 

Property taxes funded county operations, school boards and cities.

Three of the four batches of assessments are in the mail, with the remaining one to be sent out probably this week.

Each property owner has 45 days to appeal an assessment.  The 45-day window will close on the first batch at the first of May; from then on, the revenue picture will come into focus as quickly as Manning's office can estimate how many appeals to expect.

If last year is any barometer, he can expect a lot as more people use the Taxpayer Return form, which allows a property owner to offer their own idea of their property value. 

This year under a new Georgia law, Manning's assessments must consider nearby foreclosures and distressed properties.

Commissioner Bill Edwards said that's unfair because his property value goes down due to something he can't control.

"Well," his colleague Tom Lowe shot back, "this man's got to evaluate properties on what they'll bring."

The sum total of what all Fulton's properties will bring  -- the Tax Digest -- can't be prepared until the vast majority of the assessments are set.  The more appeals, the longer the delay.

FULTON COUNTY SETTLES WITH JAIL PUBLICATION

A nonprofit which produces a prison news publication says Fulton County has agreed to pay nearly $150,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging unconstitutional censorship.

Prison Legal News sued in federal court in 2007 after then-Fulton Sheriff Myron Freeman banned distribution of nonreligious publications within the jail.

The nonprofit announced Thursday that Fulton agreed to settle the case by paying the organization $30,000 and by covering its legal costs, which came to nearly $120,000.

In 2008, the court issued a preliminary injunction that prohibited the jail from using the mail policy, but the litigation continued until this year.

Paul Wright, editor of the publication, noted in his lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta that such bans at the Fulton jail already were declared unconstitutional in a 2002 lawsuit.

GEORGIA PUBLIC DEFENDER SHAKEUP DELAYED

Georgia lawmakers have backed off plans to transfer parts of the state's public defender system back to county control, instead giving attorneys the rest of the year to rein in costs that have long frustrated legislators.

State Rep. Rich Golick, who chairs a key House committee, said Friday the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council and other legal groups will spend the rest of the year trying to "strike a proper balance'' to control costs. But he said if they are unable to reach a consensus, lawmakers could be forced to step in during next year's legislative session.

"Doing nothing is not an option. The way things are going on currently is not sustainable for the future. Failure is not an option,'' said Golick, who chairs the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee. "If this bogs down, then the General Assembly will be forced to bring a solution on its own.''

Transferring parts of the system back to county control would reverse one of the state's most ambitious civil justice programs in years. Lawmakers created the statewide system in 2003 to replace the hodgepodge of public defender offices which critics said were consistently unprepared to represent Georgia's poor defendants.

"It would be step back in the wrong direction,'' said Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights, one of the system's biggest critics."It just makes for a very splintered and inconsistent system.''

The ailing public defender system has struggled almost since its start in 2005, faced with the costly trial of courthouse gunman Brian Nichols, tepid support from lawmakers and a souring economy. The state now can't afford to pay to defend the accused in several death penalty cases, leaving them to wait in jail for years for their trials to start.

Frustrated civil rights groups have tried to force changes by peppering the system with a flurry of lawsuits, including a recent case that claimed the state was refusing to provide attorneys for dozens of convicted criminals seeking appeals.

One of the thorniest issues involves so-called conflict cases -- those with multiple defendants. Legislative leaders have suggested shifting those cases to the counties because they say they can be better managed locally. A new $100 fine on criminal cases has been suggested to pay for the transfers.

Golick said he hasn't ruled out the idea of a legislative solution, but he said he's confident the public defenders, the State Bar of Georgia and other legal experts can help hash out a compromise. The Smyrna Republican cautioned, though, that the flurry of lawsuits only complicates their efforts.

"There are some folks that are more interested in grabbing cheap headlines and doing some very public chest-beating while simultaneously doing something I think they hope will bring the system to its knees and force a solution,'' he said. ``I think the adversarial nature will only marginalize their relevance.''