A movement is afoot in the Indiana General Assembly to move away from the merit selection process for judges. That movement must be stopped immediately.
House Bill 1491 would make Lake County the only Hoosier county in which judicial candidates are not elected. It is a step backward at a time when forward momentum is needed.
In Lake and St. Joseph counties, most superior court judges are nominated by a panel of lawyers and lay people, then appointed by the governor. Those judges face voters every six years in nonpartisan retention questions.
It is a sensible process, one aimed at keeping judges out of politics.
This process was supported 9-0 last October by the Indiana Commission on Courts. That summer study group urged extending the merit selection process for county division judges in Lake County and retaining the selection process in St. Joseph County.
The Indiana State Bar Association and the judges themselves oppose House Bill 1491, but the state Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-5 last week to keep the bill alive.
State Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, is the Senate sponsor of this legislation.
State Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, has said he will pursue legislation next year that would doom the merit selection process for Lake County as well.
In 2006, we said, "As with so many other facets of life in Lake County, politics can mire the election of judges under a party label. The merit process helped bring the judiciary out of that entanglement."
That holds true today.
A judge who is worried about re-election is pressured to make decisions that might be in the best interest of the party or of the judge's re-election prospects, but not necessarily that of justice.
HB 1491 is a pet project of House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, who has been an extreme obstructionist this session.
Unless this bill is stopped, the cause of good government in Indiana will suffer yet again.
Rather than electing all judges, Lake County should have the selection process expanded to all judges with state courts within the county, just as the summer study committee recommended.
