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NCOCK COUNTY — The county judiciary can now move forward with plans to add a full-time magistrate in the county courts. Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill into law Monday, April 26 meaning there will be a fourth full-time judicial official as soon as this summer with the state picking up the tab.
The measure was backed by Reps. Bob Cherry, R-Greenfield; Sean Eberhart, R-Shelbyville; Chris Jeter, R-Fishers and Sen. Mike Crider, R-Greenfield. The bill sailed through the legislative process in both the House and the Senate without any real opposition. The new law includes provisions for courts in several counties and calls for the new magistrate position to have an annual salary of $128,022. Future salary increases will depend on legislative or administrative action. However, judicial officers are assumed to receive a 2.5% annual salary increase.
Cherry, who helped author House Bill 1064 noted community members and local lawmakers worked hard to ensure the legislation passed so that a new magistrate can begin serving the county as soon as possible.
“Our judicial officials are facing mounting workloads, which then impacts the court system as a whole,” Cherry said. “This new law paving the way for an additional magistrate will be really beneficial.”
The county’s three judges, Scott Sirk, Circuit Court; D.J. Davis, Superior Court 1; and Dan Marshall, Superior Court 2 will determine the hiring process and when the full-time judicial official will begin their duties.
“We’re going to schedule a time in the next few weeks to discuss the hiring process,” Davis said on behalf of the county judiciary, which wants to speak in one voice on the decision.
The judges are not clear yet if they have to follow any state protocol for filling the position and want to make sure they adhere to any state mandate before discussing how the hiring will play out.
It’s not clear yet if the judiciary will open the position up for applicants or promote current court commissioner Cody Coombs who has expressed interest in the position and already carries a heavy courtroom load which includes filling in for the three county judges. The local judiciary are on record as saying they do not plan to keep the commissioner’s position once the magistrate starts.
“We want to have universal agreement on what we want to do,” Davis said. “I think when they’ve hired commissioners in the past they’ve held interviews, but because this is state funded we want to make sure we understand the state hiring process.”
The magistrate’s role will have more authority than the court commissioner’s current duties. The person who gets the position will be able to sign off on their own rulings, something the current court commissioner doesn’t always get to do.
Officials may look at other counties that have added a magistrate to see how they’ve handled filling similar positions. Davis had noted in a previous story on the position a similar opening in Hamilton County netted 40 candidates. He would expect a similar number of candidates to apply for the local position if the judges accept applicants.
Regardless of how the position is filled Eberhart said he was pleased to see the governor sign the bill into law earlier this week for the same reasons Cherry mentioned, relieving the growing burden of cases adding up for county judges and staff.
“It’s great to see the hard work everyone put into this bill pay off,” said Eberhart.
Jeter called the bill passage a “major step forward” in the community as officials try to address the backlog in the county court system and reiterated his fellow legislators’ views.
“Our hope is that this will provide some much-needed relief to our judicial officers who work day in and day out serving Hoosiers,” Jeter said.
