Many of us have been watching Members of the Judiciary Committee interviewing judges who are currently under consideration for reappointment this week. When they did so, I noticed that the Members of the Committee often referred to evaluations of the judges they had before them. This led me to investigate more about the evaluations themselves.
My questions about the evaluations brought me to the Public Service and Trust Committee which was established in 2007 to improve the performance of the CT Judicial Branch in serving the public. Part of the work that the Public Service and Trust Commission did was to establish a Committee to investigate the Branch's Judicial Performance Evaluation Program. As an aside, the last time this program was investigated was in 2001, so it was about time to take another look. Taking a look at Judges' Performance evaluations was a part of the mandate of the Committee.
In order to address this mandate, the Committee broke up into four separate subcommittees which were entitled as follows:
1. Evaluating Judges Assigned to High Volume Courts and as Presiding Judges;
2. Evaluating Judge Trial Referees;
3. Evaluating Supreme Court Justices and Appellate Court Judges;
4. Improvement of the Existing System for Evaluating Trial Judges.
The first meeting of the Subcommittee on the Improvement of the Existing system for Evaluating Trial Judges took place on February 5, 2009 and included Judiciary Committee Member Senator Andrew W. Roraback.
The first meeting of the Subcommittee on Evaluating Judges Assigned to High Volume Courts and as Presiding Judges took place on February 11, 2009 and included Judiciary Committee Member Representative Gerald Fox, III.
The problem is that when it came to these Subcommittees where both of these Judiciary Committee Members could have acted on behalf of the Citizens of the State of Connecticut, for the better part these Members--Roraback and Fox--were missing in action.
They simply did not bother to attend most of the meetings!
This is unfortunate since the two were the only legislators invited to participate in the examination of the Judicial Performance Evaluation Program. Representative Gerald Fox attended two out of the seven meetings he was supposed to go to, while Senator Andrew Roraback attended two out of the eight he was supposed to go to.
This is pretty disgraceful given how important it is to have a fully responsible and ethical group of judges in our courtrooms throughout the State. The only way to make sure we have such high quality judges is to hold them accountable through well crafted and conducted performance evaluations.
Since these two legislators weren't there for many of the meetings important to the development of such evaluations, clearly they could not make the kinds of valuable contributions to the process which Citizens of the State of Connecticut had the right to expect that they would.
Both were absent at the June 4, 2009 meeting when the Subcommittees presented the results of their deliberations to the umbrella Committee to investigate the Judicial Evaluation Program.
You would think these two would be ashamed to neglect their responsibility to the public or at least that the Judiciary Committee itself would recognize that these are two legislators without any motivation to do the work they are assigned.
But no.
According to Representative Gerald Fox's website, "In 2011 Representative Gerald Fox was named House Chairman of the Judiciary Committee."
The website goes further into the responsibilities of this Committee, stating, "The Committee, among the most important statewide, is responsible for legislation related to all courts, judicial procedures in criminal and civil law, probation and parole. The committee provides oversight and guidance for the Judicial Department, the Department of Corrections and the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities in addition to all judicial nominations."
So having thoroughly shirked his responsibilities earlier in relation to the Connecticut Judicial Branch, and having completely disregarded his obligations to the Citizens he represented, Representative Gerald Fox still obtained the honor of Chairing the Judiciary Committee which has such major responsibility for guiding the CT Judicial Branch.
The question I have for those who appointed him to this position is, since he couldn't care less the first time, what made them think he would be bothered to do a decent job the second time?
Certainly, victims of family court, taxpaying Citizens of Connecticut have been appearing before the Judiciary Committee reporting on the abuse and corruption of Family Court for a number of years now and nothing has been done under his leadership.
Perhaps now is the time for a change? It certainly is something to consider!
What about Senator Andrew Roraback who could not be bothered to appear in order to assist in developing the procedures which are now used to evaluate the work of the very judges who have abused so many victims of family court in custody cases throughout the State?
He was sworn in as a Connecticut Superior Court Judge by Governor Daniel Malloy in April 2013.
What can you say about that other than here we have another example of how the State of Connecticut rewards negligent and irresponsible behavior and puts the worst offenders in positions of responsibility with the Connecticut Judicial Branch.
Then Members of the Judiciary Committee act like they have no idea what we are talking about when we come to provide testimony before the Judiciary Committee, they look at us with blank faces, and fail make the kinds of probing inquires which could result in the correction of the problems.
They know very well what is going on and they need to do something about it and stop shirking their responsibilities.
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