Right call to drop lawsuit
Put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Justice of the Peace Precinct 2 James McElroy and his fellow plaintiff Phil Peeples.
Their legal effort, which seems to have been engineered to force the county to move McElroy’s fellow Justice of the Peace Precinct 3 Peggy Simon to a new courtroom, smacks of frivolity.
The county said all along they would follow the law and move Simon to a new office, certainly by the end of 2008, and they kept their word. At one point officials looked at 14 spots. All they needed was time, not a legal sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
Perhaps McElroy truly believed he was assisting the people. He has been their champion before, including his victory in a legal battle last year that showed the Burnet County Commissioners Court violated the Open Meetings Act. But not this time.
At least this latest fracas seems to be over. If there is one silver lining, it is an admonition by McElroy to continue watching government officials. While that sentiment is valid in a democracy, the lawsuit still was unnecessary.
The suit, filed Feb. 25 in 33rd state District Court by McElroy, claimed county officials violated state law by allowing Simon to hear cases at the South County Annex in Marble Falls, although the office lies outside Simon’s Precinct 3 jurisdiction.
McElroy petitioned the court to declare the justice of the peace Precinct 3 seat vacant and to order the commissioners to “establish a justice of the peace courtroom and offices for justice of the peace Precinct 3 within Precinct 3 and appoint a qualified person to fill the vacancy in the office of justice of the peace.”
State law stipulates each justice of the peace must occupy office space within his or her precinct in counties — such as Burnet — with a population that exceeds 30,000 inhabitants.
The commissioners had no idea such a law existed for counties above 30,000 people until County Attorney Eddie Arredondo discovered it during one of his routine conferences with associates. He conscientiously brought the information to court, and it took the commissioners just over six months to fix the problem — not bad, really. Otherwise, several more months might have passed, and nobody would have been the wiser.
McElroy argued the county passed the 30,000 mark with the 2000 Census, meaning local officials have been violating the law for eight years.
But the truth is, once county officials learned of their error last fall, they began to move justices of the peace into their respective jurisdictions. Justice of the Peace Precinct 1 Wendel Gilmore quickly transferred to new quarters; McElroy remained in his office in the Burnet County Courthouse, and Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace Edward Cutchin stayed in the South County Annex.
After a long search and some false starts, Simon settled into new chambers on U.S. 281 in Marble Falls. She found a new home, just as the county promised she would.
Had the county actually refused to move Simon or unduly dragged its heels in finding her new quarters, then McElroy’s efforts would have been worthwhile.
The legal roll of the dice by McElroy in what seems to have been a bid to unseat a fellow jurist simply because her office was in the wrong place did not seem to serve the public good.