Friday, January 27, 2017

The Speaker of the House just appointed the House members of the Joint Judicial Retention Committee; those members are:

Rep. Conquest of Newbury
Rep. Rachelson of Burlington
Rep. Troiano of Stannard
Rep. Viens of Newport City

Now the committee can organize and begin the process of interviewing ten superior judges as well as the four supreme court justices that are seeking retention. Every six years the committee is stressed with such a large number of judges. As many of you may know, the position or seat that a judge occupies has a six year term. The individual judge does not. In the past I can recall a number of times that a judge was still in the confirmation process and was in the retention process at the same time.

As the committee posts its scheduled times to interview the judges and justices and when the public hearings will be held I will post that here and on the VBA website so any of you who wish to be heard will know when and where to appear. Usually, these hearings are held around 5 PM with the public hearings beginning at 7 PM.

We are continuing to work on a bill from last year (H.206) dealing with regulation of notaries public. Last session we identified a number of issues with the bill and it appears the Secretary of State will be proposing a similar if not identical bill this year. I will keep you informed as this moves along. It may require effort on the part of each of us to get this right.

Have a nice weekend and, as always, thanks for reading.