Potential Antrim Departure Could (Eventually) Mean More 86th District Court Time For Leelanau

The 86th District Court – which handles criminal and civil matters for Grand Traverse, Leelanau, and Antrim counties – is feeling the strain of staffing challenges, growing caseloads, and overtaxed judges. The court’s issues could be resolved if/when the state legislature takes up a bill that would separate Antrim County from the court for good. In the meantime, though, Leelanau County – which has the lowest caseload of the three counties – will have to settle for limited facetime with judges.

At Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting, Chief Judge Robert Cooney and Court Administrator Gwen Taylor were on hand to report on the status of the 86th District Court. Central to that report was the news, announced earlier this year, that the court is significantly under-resourced when it comes to judges.

“The Constitution requires that, every 10 years, the Supreme Court, through its state court administrator’s office, prepare [a judicial resources report] to show whether we have sufficient judicial resources in the various counties throughout Michigan,” Cooney told commissioners. “And what it showed for the 86th District Court is we need 3.15 judges; we have 2.0, as you know. And that’s a problem.”

Beyond Cooney, the only other judge with the 86th District Court is Michael Stepka. The pair splits a caseload that includes criminal cases, traffic infractions, probation matters, civil disputes, and specialty courts like sobriety court, drug court, and domestic violence court. Multiply those assorted matters by three counties, and you have a strained court, Cooney said.

Per Taylor, Grand Traverse accounts for the lion’s share of cases; only one day a week is set aside for Leelanau and Antrim. The judges, Taylor said, “alternate on traveling to Antrim and Leelanau on Wednesdays.”

Cooney said Tuesday that the under-resourcing of the 86th District Court goes back a long way. Grand Traverse and Leelanau, he explained, “have been part of the same judicial district since 1968.” For the first three decades, the district got by just fine with two judges. When Antrim County joined around 2000, though, the district was allocated a third judge.

“Around 2015, they took that judge away,” Cooney said. “We could have told them back then that was a problem.”

Since then, the issue has been exacerbated by population growth, with Cooney noting that all three counties have been “outpacing just about every other area of the state.” Taylor reported that the 86th District Court has seen a steady caseload uptick in recent years. With population growth “expected to continue,” Cooney said, the court is looking at ways to address the strain.

The elephant in the room is the potential exit of Antrim County. In 2023, Antrim commissioners adopted a resolution requesting state approval to form an independent district/probate court in their county – a move that would terminate Antrim’s intercounty agreement with Grand Traverse and Leelanau for the 86th District. The resolution stated that the existing arrangement, which splits court costs proportionally between the three counties, “does not promote the efficient administration of justice or deliver services to the people of Antrim County effectively or economically.”

The resolution set a start-of-2025 timeline for Antrim’s judicial secession. However, since Antrim needs legislative and gubernatorial approval to create its own independent courts – and since little progress was made in 2024 – the county’s board voted late last year to withdraw their notice of intent to leave. That move pre-empted potential disruption of court services for Antrim, but didn’t halt the county’s departure plans.

“This is a long process, longer than what we were hoping for. But...we’re dedicated to moving forward and making sure the Antrim County public gets the best service for the least amount of money,” Antrim County Administrator Jeremy Scott said at the time.

According to Cooney, the legislation for Antrim to separate from the 86th District “went in back in the spring,” but hasn't seen any movement since “other than referring the bill to the judiciary committee.” Antrim leaving, he added, “would relieve us of about 0.5 need for district court judges.”

The issue now, Cooney continued, is that the legislation “isn’t anticipated to pass – if it does eventually pass – until the end of 2026."

“A short-term solution would be an administrative order from the state court administrator’s office appointing the probate judge as the district court in Antrim,” he said. “We’re seriously considering whether to move forward with that, because last time I was in Antrim, we had to schedule a trial out into April. And that’s not good. We should be scheduling trials no more than 90 days out.”

If Antrim does leave, Taylor said, “there would be an increased cost to Leelanau County [for court services] because the cost is now spread between two counties as opposed to three.” In 2025, Leelanau is carrying $356,000 worth of the court’s $4.35 million budget, compared to $3.2 million for Grand Traverse County and $665,000 for Antrim. Because losing a county would enable a considerable consolidation of operations, though, Taylor clarified that Leelanau would not need to absorb anywhere close to Antrim’s current buy-in.

“The estimated cost increase to Leelanau County is approximately $6,000,” she said.

The primary benefit of the split for Leelanau, meanwhile, is that the court would “have more judge days to offer” to the county, Cooney said.