Topeka ? Franklin County Commissioner John E. Taylor said recently that members of a family there practically created their own waste dump.

“They lived in several dilapidated mobile homes daisy-chained with electrical extension cords for power,” Taylor said. “They dug holes in the yard for bathrooms and stockpiled waste so toxic it left the dirt blue.”

He said it took a monumental effort by the county and state to clean up the site.

“How different might the result have been if Franklin County could have availed itself of a codes court early on in creation of this nuisance?” he asked state lawmakers recently.

Last week, the House approved a bill that would allow Franklin, Douglas and Miami counties to have a special court docket for county code enforcement.

The measure, House Bill 2309, now goes to the Senate for consideration.

The code courts already are in use in Johnson, Wyandotte and Sedgwick counties.

But elsewhere, alleged county code infractions are handled in state district court, which is a problem, county officials say.

“Cases involving murder, burglary and the like take priority in district court,” said Judy Moler, general counsel and legislative services director for the Kansas Association of Counties. “Code cases fall to the bottom of the barrel in the docketing of cases.”

Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug said commissioners had not decided whether to establish the code court but would like to have the option available to them.

“We might need to do that some day,” he said.

He said enforcement of building, zoning, and environmental codes, such as dealing with dump sites and junked cars, took a long time to resolve if cases went through the district court system.

“As a direct result, our enforcement of these type of regulations is not as consistent, or as effective, as we would like,” he said.

The legislation would allow county commissioners to set up a codes court that would be procedurally similar to municipal courts.

Weinaug said there had been no analysis done on the cost of the proposal, which would be paid for by the county. The bill would allow counties to authorize a tax of no more than one-half mill to support the court.

A mill is one dollar in property tax for every $1,000 in assessed property value.

State Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, who carried the legislation in the House, said the hope was that code courts could resolve problems more quickly.

“Right now, the cases that go to district court are not a high priority. A lot of these code violations tend to pit neighbor against neighbor, so the longer they are drawn out, the more contentious they become,” he said.