2019 Cost Waiver Report Available

The Administrative Office of the Courts has issued its most recent report on cost waivers to the General Assembly. This report covers the first full year of cost waiver data since the General Assembly’s amendment of G.S. 7A-304(a), requiring written notice and an opportunity to be heard for any government entity directly affected by a waiver. Let’s see if that change had an impact on waiver practices. The latest report is available here. The AOC is required by G.S. 7A-350 to make this report to the legislature annually, noting all cases in which a judge makes a finding of just cause to grant a waiver of criminal court costs. The report must aggregate the waivers by the district in which the waivers were granted and by the name of each judge granting a waiver. The statute does not require the AOC to report on remissions, civil judgments, or anything to do with fines. But it does. Within this year’s report, you can see some stark differences from district to district when it comes to criminal money matters. For example, some counties waive much more often than others. Some make heavy use of civil judgments, while others use them sparingly. Comparing the report to previous years, what you’d see is that the number of cases in which money is ordered has remained pretty stable, but the number of waivers has dropped. And it looks like civil judgments might be serving as a substitute for waivers in some cases, because they are on [...]