Expensive growing pains for muni courts' paperless system

The city has run into quite a few problems implementing a paperless system at the municipal courthouse, including big delays when the system went online in early April. And now we have news of another problem that could be costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars: Thanks to the scanning process required to make things paperless, police have had to release nearly 700 suspects because their arrest warrant paperwork couldn't be found. Ah, progress.

Here's the problem: To shift to an all-computerized document handling system, thousands of tickets and arrest warrants have to be scanned, one by one. The scanning is being handled by Maximus, a company that specializes in court computer systems; at first, Maximus was doing the scanning at the courthouse, but then, because of costs, the job was taken off-site — which means clerks lost access to some records. And without those records, HPD couldn't verify whether some suspects had outstanding tickets and warrants, which means the department had to let suspects (some who had racked up lots of violations) go. According to Channel 11, nearly 700 suspects were released, representing more than 3,000 cases and about $720,000 worth of fines and fees.

City Councilman Ronald Green, chairman of a task force overseeing the switch to the paperless system, called the number of lost cases "shocking," but acting Director of Municipal Courts Richard Lewis downplayed the problem, saying the number of dropped warrants represents about 6 percent of the municipal courts' case load at any one time. He also contended that the $720,000 figure is a little high because some suspects can choose to serve time in jail for a cut rate. Overall, Lewis said the problems just represent growing pains:

"We wanted to try to do this the best we could, but you don’t renovate a house while you’re living in it and you’re not inconvenienced you don’t have all the uses of that house when it’s being renovated,” said Lewis.

Sure, but can you remember a house remodeling that cost nearly three-quarter million dollars?