Adding up few days on bench doesn’t subtract from need of new judges

Taking my publisher Sherman Frederick to task publicly is not something I do frequently.

Years ago, I mentioned he was a tax deadbeat near the top of a story of prominent people who hadn’t paid property taxes. (Like most of the others I named, he had a reasonable explanation about why it wasn’t his fault.)

But I need to clarify something Sherm wrote about retired District Court Judge Lee Gates in his Dec. 27 blog, when he said Gates spent only 21 days on the bench in 2008, a stunning figure that would make Gates the poster judge for judicial slackers.

How could a judge get away with that?

I asked the court for statistics and initially got a run around. I was told the figure wasn’t accurate, the last part of the year hadn’t been counted, those wouldn’t be available until March, but I could pull all his calendars and check day by day. They said that was available online. (They aren’t.)

Through gentle persistence, I got the numbers Tuesday after new Chief Judge Art Ritchie assigned a court administrator to calculate Gates’ stats for 2008.

Here’s the skinny: Gates definitely slacked off the last few months of 2008, but he worked more than Sherm’s number suggested, even after Sherm clarified it was 23 trial days in a later blog.

The final tally? Gates spent 27 days in trial in 2008, down from 96 trial days in 2007 and 66 trial days in 2006.

But days in trial doesn’t tell the whole story.

Gates, who had been a judge since 1991 before opting not to run again, spent 136 days in 2008 hearing his nontrial calendar. Don’t bother to add the two numbers together to find out how many days he was on the bench out of the 251 working days. The stats aren’t kept that way. The days on the bench hearing his calendar and motions and the trial days may overlap.

Between Oct. 20 and Dec. 9, Gates was on the bench only one day. Most of that time, senior judges worked in his stead as he vacationed. He worked nine days in October, one day in November and seven days in December.

Saying he worked only 21, or even 27 days, isn’t the full story.

“The issue of days in court is very complicated,” Ritchie said. But he did send this pointed message. On his watch as chief judge, judges “will not be allowed to skate and not be held accountable. But to suggest that he (Gates) wasn’t here and wasn’t holding calendar is unfair.”

The detailed reports don’t tell the whole story. Judge Allen Earl looks AWOL on paper with a pitiful 19 days in trial. Except he’s a settlement judge with 111 settlement conferences in 2007.

The statistics are used as a tool to persuade legislators the courts in Clark County are overburdened and that more judges are needed. Since each judge costs Clark County $760,000 a year in support staff and operational costs, money the county would prefer to spend in other ways, the judges have come up with a new way to pay for new support staff.

In October, the judges proposed raising the court filing fees for civil cases from $151 to $270 and using that money to pay for the judges and staff. Ritchie said if court filing fees are raised, then the court users would be paying for the court services. By 2011, Ritchie estimated there would be enough money raised to pay for seven to nine new judges, if legislators approve.

Making Gates a bull’s eye for judges who don’t pull their weight makes it less likely the legislators would approve that funding idea.

When the full report for all the judges is finished in March, the affable Judge Ritchie will be in the unenviable position of convincing legislators (and Sherm) that the need for more judges is critical, Clark County judges aren’t slackers, and a new funding plan is the right thing to do.

If you want to see the 2006/2007 Activity Report, it’s on the court’s Web site at: www.clarkcountycourts.us/reports-documents.html

But frankly, the numbers don’t really say which judges are good and which are not, which is what all of us really want to know.

Now, Sherm, about that raise.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison/.