Courts as "Cash Cows" (Updated)

We'll have to confess that using courts as "city revenue generators" is a new concept for us. We'd always regarded the courts as places where citizens sought justice. These were the institutions of democracy, we'd previously thought, where disputes were sometimes adjudicated, and most often resolved, in an atmosphere of civility, fairness and judicial neutrality.

We were disabused of that naive notion yesterday morning, though, upon reading a Salt Lake Tribune article which describes the latest Utah municipal neocon fad -- establishing revenue-generating "Justice Courts."

They're "cash cows" folks, as the SL Trib article reports. Read the article yourself, if you don't believe us.

This brought to mind a recent Scott Schwebke Standard-Examiner story we read a few weeks back. One neoCON councilman Safsten quote ought to have alerted us to what the Justice Court scheme was all about, but it didn't truly dawn on us until we compared it with yesterday's SL Trib article.

From Scott Schwebke's June 22, 2005 story:

"Ogden City Council Chairman Rick Safsten said he is confident the justice court would be a financial success... ."

Guess what? The Ogden City Council has just approved its own cash cow. It's going to remodel the old Health Services building at the southwest corner of the Municipal building block, and start raking in the bucks with its own Justice Court cash heifer.

Make sure your license-plate light works from now on, and that your yard's nicely trimmed, fellow Ogdenites.

We feel a new municipal "user-fee" coming up.

The Ogden City Council neoCONS have found yet another reliable -- but heretofore untapped revenue source:

Ogden City "Justice" Court