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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Ind. Courts - Merit selection problems for Lake and St. Joseph County Courts

This afternoon Patrick Guinane of the NWI Times is reporting:

[Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond] said she doesn't expect to get a hearing for House Bill 1330, which would move four additional Lake County Superior Court judges under the merit selection system the county has been under since the 1970s.

House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, instead is backing legislation that would resume elections for St. Joseph County judges. Lake and St. Joseph are the only Indiana counties in which judges are slated by a merit review panel and appointed by the governor, an anomaly Bauer blames on decades-old Republican efforts to sap political power from the Democratic strongholds.

The story also reports:
An Indiana House panel voted 7-3 Tuesday to add a $10 filing fee to Lake County court cases, a proposal that would generate nearly $800,000 a year to build a consolidated courthouse in Crown Point. * * *

"The population is shifting to South County, and Crown Point is the center of the county," Lawson told the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Gerald Bishop, a Merrillville attorney who serves as associate counsel for the Lake County Council, said the legislation would ease "all the political discussions about payroll and everything else" that have stymied past consolidation efforts. He said having one central courthouse would make life easier for attorneys who practice in Lake County.

The $10 fee would be paid by those who file a civil case, such as a divorce, along with convicted criminal defendants, and those who enter a pretrial diversion program.

But committee members bristled at a provision that would allow at least some of the estimated $768,000 a year generated by the new fee to be spent on court renovations.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 10, 2009 03:30 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts