County dispute over new court computer system heads to mediation

A lawsuit filed by the Medina County Board of Commissioners against Medina County Domestic Domestic Relations Court Judge Mary Kovack has been referred to mediation by the Ohio Supreme Court. The case was filed Aug. 29 and stems from a proposed county plan to switch to one standardized digital case management system, which Kovack has vehemently opposed, saying her court will continue to use CourtView Justice Solutions — a system not under county officials' consideration. The Ohio Supreme Court will not weigh in on the case until mediation has concluded, it said in a statement released Tuesday. County commissioners passed a resolution Tuesday authorizing public funds to be used for Kovack's legal representation. Officials said that role will be filled by Akron-based attorney Stephen Funk at a rate of $300 an hour. Commissioners said their legal representation will cost $160 an hour in county funds. All Medina County judges aside from Kovack have agreed to use Odyssey, a case management system owned by Texas-based Tyler Technologies, when and if its acquired. Medina would pay $1.17 million for the system as well as just over $293,000 each year for maintenance. Medina County administrator Scott Miller said Tuesday that the use of one overarching system will cut down on inefficiencies and since Odyssey is a cloud-based service, negate future costs for items such as server maintenance and data backup. "If there's some sort of ransomware attack on our computers here in Medina County, our computers would shut down," he said. "The court data would be maintained by Tyler and we'd still be able to access it. Our IP staff would not have to maintain the system." Kovach issued court orders on July 29 and Aug. 12 preventing money obtained through domestic relations court costs to be used for the purchase of a new system. Miller said the system would be paid for with those fees, $200,000 in grant money from the Ohio Supreme Court and $125,000 in Medina County special project funds. "It's just amazing that we have one judge who will order us to ignore the wants and needs of the other judges," he said Tuesday during a commissioners meeting. "By purchasing one system, we're investing for the future to create a better service and for lower cost. The efficiencies that we gain through using one system will lead to savings that are quite significant." Medina County Court files are currently kept in physical paper documents with some portions copied into digital form and made available for public online viewing. Daniel Maynard, Kovach's court administrator, spoke just after Miller. He said that Franklin County, which has adopted Odyssey, has seen its juvenile court choose not to use the system to integrate its detention center and probation departments. He added that some local costs for CourtView could be attributed to licenses granted to Medina County Detention Center guards that allow them to view juvenile case files. "I haven't heard exactly what the issue is (in Franklin County) as far as integrating the detention center," Maynard said. "I will tell you that (Medina County Juvenile Court Judge Kevin Dunn) allows access to CourtView, their current case management, to all of the juvenile guards. Now the fact is, each one of those licenses, somewhere around 20 I imagine, are what I believe an unnecessary expense for individuals who really shouldn't have access to our confidential records of juveniles, the entire case file. Part of the expense here are those additional licenses." Kovack and Maynard have also maintained that continued use of CourtView is a better fiscal decision for the county due to it being cheaper than Odyssey and all 17 domestic relations court employees already being trained on and familiar with CourtView. According to court documents, Kovack has recommended the county purchase Benchmark, a case-management system from Florida-based Pioneer Technology Group, as a cheaper alternative to Odyssey. However, the judge has indicated she would still not switch to a new system even if Benchmark was selected. In a July 26 letter to county commissioners, Kovack said, "If the courts were to purchase Tyler's "Odyssey" computer software/case management system, the $293,460 annual cost to maintain the system would be approximately $50 per case. This is $24 per case more than what the Ohio Legislature has deemed to be a reasonable expense to computerize the court. "If the maximum computer fees were being collected on all civil cases in all divisions of the court, this would result in an annual budget deficit of approximately negative $173,379." Slides shown by Miller on Tuesday said that Benchmark carries a base cost of just over $395,000 and annual maintenance fees of $58,000 to $63,000. However, service through Benchmark would not cover juvenile or probate court. Services with Odyssey for juvenile and probate court would run roughly $870,000 with $268,000 in yearly maintenance. Miller compared the total cost of buying those two systems — $1.26 million — with the $1.17 million price tag of the all-encompassing version of Odyssey. After the meeting, Miller said he could not provide a time frame for when he expects a decision on the case and that it would take nine to 12 months to implement Odyssey in Medina County if the purchased goes through. Contact reporter Jonathan Delozier at (330) 721-4050 or jdelozier@medina-gazette.com.