February 11, 2010- Part 2

Because I made you wait so long for a blog post I’m posting twice today. Since I’ll be in Montpelier waiting for the 7 PM public hearing on the retention of Judges Durkin, Howard and Toor, I have some time on my hands. This morning I ended my post by saying that I was off to the House Judiciary Committee to present the VBA’s position on units, jurisdiction, and venue in a unified court system. But considering the importance of these issues and that fact the Chief Justice was presenting the Court’s position I was joined by VBA President Eileen Blackwood, also a member of the Commission on Judicial Operation. We testified jointly to the major points the VBA Board wanted the committee to hear. Those points are: the divisions should be jurisdictional. The units (we call for 12) should be county based and created by statute and not rule. (The proposal is to join Grand Isle with Franklin and Essex with Caledonia.) we call for hearings to be held in the two smaller counties. We are also calling for maintaining the existing venue rules. One compromise put on the table by the Administrative Judge is the creation of a transitional rules committee to deal with the myriad of issues that arise from the unification. The VBA has asked that it select the attorney members. Any such committee should include five attorneys, those with experience in civil, criminal, family, probate, and with experience in litigation involving self represented litigants.
I’m not certain where this will go as the committee ran out of time and didn’t react to or discuss what they heard this morning. But the pace is definitely picking up. The House Government Operations Committee put me on notice that it wants to work on the bill next Wednesday and Thursday. Those are the days that Judiciary reserved for its work time. So it appears that Judiciary may have heard from all the witnesses it feels it needs; they’re now shifting to deliberation and mark up. One issue was rescheduled from today to Tuesday though. On Tuesday, after adjournment from the floor, Judge Manley and Judge Belcher will testify. We will continue to stay with this until it’s done.
Tomorrow I’ll post something early reporting on tonight’s hearing. Thanks for reading.