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Monday, November 13, 2006
Ind. Courts - More on: Columnist writes Lake County has too many courts
On Saturday the ILB posted this entry headed "Centralize many of Lake County's 27 courts?" quoting from a Munster (NW Indiana) Times report by Bill Dolan that:
The National Center for State Courts told local judges this week they might increase their efficiency by consolidating the county's 27 courts and possibly moving some to a central location, possibly this city [Crown Point] where a dozen courtrooms already exist.Today I ran across this ILB entry from nearly a year ago:
Mark Kiesling, Munster (NW Indiana) Times columnist, writes today that Lake County has too many courts. [He wrote]:The reason you have all the courts is because of the infamous 1994 Indiana Supreme Court report known as the "weighted case load study," which looked at all the courts statewide to see if the judges were being overworked.The conclusion was that Lake County judges in the civil division were laboring in virtual sweatshops. You'd think they were making shoes for Michael Jordan the way the study portrayed the conditions.
By comparison, the judges in the county's criminal division were barely breathing. If you read the study, you'd conclude they came in for a few minutes each morning, had some coffee and then spent the rest of the day on the links.
The problem is that the weighted case load study was a load of horse manure, at least as far as Lake County was concerned.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 13, 2006 04:11 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts