Editor's note
Dwight Adams, a freelance editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
Officials from five counties told the Indiana General Assembly’s Interim Study Committee on Courts and the Judiciary last week that they were drowning in casework and desperately needed more judicial resources, but lawmakers seemed reluctant to throw them a lifeline.
The judicial officers told the committee that they needed more help to handle the criminal and civil cases coming into their courts. They said they are working extra hours every day and often tote their laptops on vacation to keep their dockets moving and participate remotely in hearings in order to meet statutory deadlines and due-process requirements.
Also, they said their courts are collaborating with community corrections and probation officers to develop innovative programs and opening problem-solving courts to address problems like addiction. Moreover, they have sought grants and cut budgets so their county councils could cobble together funds to pay for judicial referees to help with the caseloads.
“I love my job and I’m going to do this … whether you support (our request) or not, but I think for us to do a justice to our constituents, we have to be able to accommodate them,” Vigo County Magistrate Judge Daniel Kelly told the committee on Thursday. “We have to be able to get the hearings scheduled, and there’s just not time to do that.”
However, lawmakers seemed cool to the judges’ pleas. The sticking point was money.
Judges and magistrates are paid for by the state and not the individual counties. According to a fiscal analysis by the Legislative Services Agency, the estimated cost of salary and benefits in fiscal year 2024 for a single judge was $230,961 and for a magistrate judge was $187,759.
Elkhart County asked for three state-funded magistrate judges while Spencer and Vigo counties each requested a single magistrate judge for their courts. Hamilton County said “crazy unprecedented growth” necessitated it add two new magistrates and two new judgeships along with two new courts. Lawrence County asked for a magistrate judge and said it supported an amendment proposed by Sen. Eric Koch, R-Bedford, which would lower the population threshold so that counties with at least 45,000 residents—rather than the current 50,000 residents—would be able to get a magistrate judge.
The compensation cost for these eight magistrates and two judges tops $1.96 million.
Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, was particularly skeptical of the need for more judicial resources.
Pointing to the current utilization rates as calculated by the Indiana Weighted Caseload Measurement System, adopted in 1996 to establish a uniform way to compare trial court caseloads statewide, Brown asked whether any county shown to have more judicial officers than needed had ever downsized. Also, she highlighted that the utilization rates are based on judges spending just six and a half hours a day on judicial matters and working 213 days annually, which is roughly 42 weeks out of 52 weeks each year.
Doing her own calculations, Brown said if judges worked 10 more days to bring the total to 223, the severity of need drops to almost zero across the state.
The judges, magistrates and referees appearing before the committee pushed back against Brown’s assertions. They disputed that they had easy schedules or that they had the capacity to do more work.
“I don’t know about sick days because I don’t take them. I don’t know about six or seven weeks of vacation because I don’t get that either,” Hamilton County Superior Court No. 2 Judge Jonathan Brown said. “But I do know that my wife gets irritated with me because I spend probably two or three hours a night, five to six nights a week, at home, working my queue, working on divorce cases, working on commercial court cases. That’s like 12 to 15 hours a week that I’m at home.”
Details not shown in the numbers
Under the weighted caseload measurement calculation, a utilization rate of 1.00 is the base at which a county is presumed to have the exact number of judges and magistrates needed to handle its cases. A higher utilization number indicates the county’s caseload may require additional judicial officers, while a lower number denotes a county that may have more judicial officers than it needs.
Of the five counties that came before the committee, Elkhart, Hamilton and Vigo counties have utilization rates of 1.18, 1.34 and 1.33, respectively. Although Lawrence and Spencer counties had rates of 0.90 and 0.64, respectively, their judicial officers argued the numbers do not provide a complete picture of all they do.
Spencer County Circuit Court Judge Jonathan Dartt told the committee that since he is the only judge in the county, “there is no one for me to pass the buck to.” He said he presides over every case from infractions and small claims to murders and multimillion-dollar litigation. Also, he said he has been serving the needs of his community as the former county prosecutor, and now as judge, by helping to start a truancy court, a family treatment court, the community corrections program, a Court Appointed Special Advocates program, and each year, inviting local elementary school students into his courtroom for a mock trial.
“I’m on call 24/7,” Dartt said. “Every search warrant, every removal of a child (from a home), every juvenile detention, I’m the person they call. I’ve done (the work) on the beach, I’ve done it at the ball games when I’m coaching my kids. I’ve done it wherever I’ve got to do it because that’s my job.”
Vigo County Superior Court No. 4 Judge Christopher Newton and Magistrate Judge Daniel Kelly said even though the county’s population has been stagnant, the courts are recording an increase in work because of growing poverty in the community and, relatedly, a rise in mental health and addiction issues.
In 2010, Kelly told the committee, Vigo County had just over 100 Children in Need of Services cases filed, but this year, that number is expected to exceed 500. Moreover, he said, most of those CHINS cases involve the child being removed from the home, which requires that the court hold a detention hearing within 48 hours of the removal.
“What happens then is we fill our docket to accommodate this large volume of cases,” Kelly said of the CHINS proceedings. “So, if somebody comes in and they say they’re not getting to see their child that was born out of wedlock, ... instead of getting that case scheduled within a reasonable time, they may have to wait eight months for a 15-minute hearing.”
Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, asked several of the judges and magistrates what policy changes the legislature could make that might lessen their workload. He specifically mentioned marijuana possession and whether having an alternative to a criminal charge would ease the courts’ dockets.
When Brown, the Hamilton County Superior Court judge, said he wanted “to stay in my lane” of enforcing the laws and not get into writing policy, Taylor implored him to swerve into the legislature’s lane.
“We’re going to have to turn off the spigot real soon,” Taylor said. “I’ve served on this committee for several years and there has not been one summer that we haven’t seen at least five or six courts asking for us to pay for another magistrate because of their caseload.”
‘We were in trouble’
The last time the Indiana General Assembly passed legislation creating new judicial positions was in 2021 with House Enrolled Act 1064.
That bill created a new court and a new judgeship in Hamilton County and funded new magistrate judges for Decatur, Huntington, Hancock, Lake and Marion counties. The total annual cost was estimated to be $1.37 million in fiscal year 2023.
In 2023, House Bill 1114 would have provided one new magistrate judge to Daviess and Delaware counties and six new magistrate judges to Elkhart County. In addition, it would have established a second superior court in Dubois County and enabled Vigo County to appoint a sixth superior court judge. The annual estimated cost was $1.67 million, beginning in fiscal year 2025.
Despite picking up bipartisan support, HB 1114 never even got a hearing.
Elkhart County Superior Court No. 1 Judge Kristine Osterday said the courts in her county had to scramble when they did not get the magistrates. “We were in trouble,” she said.
The courts were able to get the county to pay for referees, Osterday said, but only after assuring local officials the extra personnel would have little to no fiscal impact on the county’s budget. Although the courts were able to get the money by cutting case management positions for the unified family court and staffing positions, they have no guarantee the county council will continue the funding.
Osterday said Elkhart County is especially careful with its budget because the pain inflicted by the Great Recession is still fresh. Dependent on recreational vehicle manufacturing, the county was the epicenter of the 2008 economic crisis, suffering the worst unemployment and job loss in the entire country.
Elkhart County courts, Osterday told the committee, wanted to assure local residents that the judiciary would serve them in a timely and consistent fashion. “We also want to make sure those positions are attractive to qualified applicants,” she said. “As it is now, our referees are doing just as much work as our magistrates for less pay and less assurance that they are going to have a job from year to year.”
Courts with too many judicial resources?
Sen. Brown stayed focused on the county courts that, according to the weighted caseload report, had more judicial resources than they needed. She queried Judge Brown about what the Statehouse should do about courts that essentially are shown as having more judges or magistrate judges than they need. He responded the situation requires the legislature to take a broad look at the state’s entire judicial system to see where changes should be made.
The senator retorted, “It may be a whole of government solution, but the whole of government right now has never brought a solution, and your branch of government comes to us asking for the request but never comes to us with a solution on those counties … with how to fix the counties that are underutilized, so to speak.”
Lawrence County Circuit Court Referee Anah Hewetson Gouty said although the utilization rate shows her county has more judicial officers than needed for its caseload, she is being counted among the four officers. However, her position is funded solely by the county and, by law, a referee cannot do all the work a magistrate judge does.
Even so, Gouty noted she has a heavy caseload. She said as the juvenile referee, she is in the courtroom five days a week handling cases like Children in Need of Services (CHINS), Termination of Parental Rights (TPRs), custody, paternity, and enforcement of child support orders. The caseload has also increased, she said, from just two TPRs and 30 CHINS cases in 2012 to 62 TPRs and 120 CHINS in 2023.
Outside of the courtroom, Gouty is collaborating to develop detention policies and screening tools. Also, she is working on juvenile justice initiatives such as the Youth Justice Oversight Committee to help create reforms and supporting the CASA volunteer training program.
Gouty said the county’s ability to continue fully funding the referee position is uncertain, since the county is “in a dire situation fiscally.” A deputy prosecutor position and a position in human resources have been cut from the budget, which, with other cuts, has totaled $1.8 million, she said.
“The juvenile referee in Lawrence County is one of the most-highest-paid positions, and if they cut this position—I’m not telling you they will and I’m hopeful they’re not getting any ideas by listening to this legislative committee meeting this morning … Lawrence County would go from have four to three and most certainly be the top of your list for severity of need.”
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