Tuesday’s regular meeting of the Grays Harbor County Board of Commissioners took a turn for the unexpected when a discussion regarding jury management responsibilities threatened to go from a low simmer to a boil.

Grays Harbor County District Court Presiding Judge Megan Valentine presented a plan for the district court to take over jury administration from the Superior Court Clerk’s office. Judge Valentine indicated that Superior Court Clerk Kym Foster had informed the district court that her office was no longer going to manage jury summons administration. According to Judge Valentine, the district court has had a longstanding agreement with the superior court clerk for these services.

“Since at least 1989 from our research, the district court has had an agreement with the superior court clerk that’s authorized by statute for the superior court clerk to do the summonsing of all the juries for district court trials,” Judge Valentine said. “We were notified earlier this month that the county clerk does not want to continue doing that. We’ve put together a plan for what it looks like for us to go ahead and resume taking care of our own jury management.”

Judge Valentine went on to explain what jury management is and all that it entails including mailing jury services notices to potential jurors in Grays Harbor County. She outlined a plan that would take six months to implement and would cost roughly $140,000 including the hiring of a new full-time employee and their own implementation and licenses of Jury + software. Judge Valentine added that the district court was not asking the commissioners to take action at this meeting but hoped they would at the next one.

Grays Harbor County District Court Civil Division Director Heather Warsaw answered specific questions about the Jury + software and her expertise with the platform.

“This is a system that is very customized to the court that is using it. So in order to share it, we would have to follow the exact process using the exact forms that are currently being utilized by the clerk’s office,” Warsaw said. “The idea of us taking this over is to not be utilizing those exact forms and systems. Unfortunately we do have to have our own contract independent of what the clerks are using. I have intimate familiarity with that software system. My prior role was jury administrator in another county and I did utilize that particular system.”

Grays Harbor County Superior Court Clerk Foster was invited to offer her perspective on the logistics of jury administration and staffing challenges.

“First off I would like to say thank you for showing our value in the clerk’s office for our juries because we have never been recognized for all we do. So to have somebody come up and say here’s the value of taking over a minute part of what you do and put a $140,000 price tag on it is amazing,” Foster said. “I have one person and we don’t have a computer for this program. We don’t have a dedicated staff member. That staff member does drug court, family therapy court, she runs the front counter, she’s our Spanish speaker clerk who is pulled away often. In the midst of that she has to try to help out and do jury selection process. The RCWs are very clear, we cannot have more than one jury process in a county.”

Foster explained that the singular process prevents prospective jurors from getting selected for both superior and district court during a cycle. She went on to explain where the names for jury service come from, the process by which jurors are qualified and that the county clerk’s office shares reports with the district court as a courtesy. Foster also said that the municipal courts qualify their own jurors.

“I’m just asking that the district carry their own weight. If it’s going to be down to having to spend $140,000, for them to process, they ordered 4,500 (prospective jurors) last year, my office processed 48,000 by ourselves, one person. If they’re going to ask for ($140,000), I’d like to have a quarter of that so we can continue.”

District 1 County Commissioner Georgia Miller asked for clarification as to why the county clerk’s office wants to discontinue providing jury management for the district court.

“So my understanding is the reason why the email went out that you were going to stop providing this service was because there was not an agreement between the two departments,” Miller said. “Is that correct?”

According to Foster such an agreement cannot be found. Miller followed up with a suggestion to schedule a work session so the two departments could work out their issues with jury management.

“I think we need a work session so both departments can get on board so that we could come up with appropriate, meaningful language of what each department’s duties are so that we can fulfill the need in a responsible way for the taxpayers,” Miller said. “It does sound like there would be some redundancy by having two entities do what one entity can do and truly sounds like (it) is willing to do but would like an agreement.”

Foster’s response to that drew Judge Valentine’s ire.

“At the end of the day we all have the same goal. We do want to provide a service and we want to make sure that there are juries held,” Foster said. “But … support goes both ways.” Foster was looking directly at the district court contingent when she uttered that last line.

With that, Valentine got up and stormed out of the commissioners’ meeting room.

“I am not willing to do it all anymore. I can’t. My staff can’t. With what we do, we are inundated,” Foster said. “And if somebody else can pick up their own weight that would be great. If they don’t want to, (there are) other ways of going around it. I’m here willing to do whatever it takes for the taxpayers.”

Foster added that she has held off hiring additional staff and has made other concessions due to budgetary concerns.

District 3 County Commissioner Vickie Raines reiterated the need for a work session between the commissioners, the county clerk’s office and the district court to clarify these issues.

“I understand this is as though the clerk’s office is doing this work, providing this service, and the district court is the customer,” Raines said. “I think that having a common agreement that outlines what expectations are and outlines what timelines are would be very, very helpful. I think we should discuss that. What I’d like to do is see if we could come together and find some common ground, and be able to move forward with this leaving the work where it’s at, funding it properly, staffing it properly, and then having a guideline between the two departments to be able to understand expectations and what the product will be and put some guidelines around it if that’s acceptable to the two departments.”

Raines added that she was not comfortable approving the request for the expense the district court proposed and said that more discussion was necessary.

District Court Judge Andrea Vingo also took the opportunity to address the commissioners. She expressed a sense of urgency in finding a solution and decried the county clerk’s communications regarding this issue.

“District court is a customer, we pay the clerk when we get the bills. The reason we put this on today and did it so quickly is because we got told not on just one occasion, but another occasion, that superior court was not going to be doing that for us anymore,” Judge Vingo said. “We reached out and said, ‘What do you need, how can we help, can we talk about this?’ And we were shut down. That shouldn’t be a surprise to you when you see Ms. Foster’s demeanor today. We’ve really done our due diligence and worked very hard and that’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re here so quickly. As a judge I can’t make the clerk be the one to request jurors for us if that’s not something that she’s willing to do. She’s not willing to do that.”

Raines once again reiterated that she was not comfortable moving jury management from the county clerk’s office to the district court and that the parties need to attend a work session to hammer out their differences.

That work session is set for March 4.