In a last-minute agreement that averts a crisis in the state’s courts, Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the judicial branch have reached a deal that will keep open courthouses that had been theatened with closure by the state’s budget crisis.
The deal clears the path for an important public hearing Friday for nine judicial nominees whose futures had been in question in a budget battle involving all three branches of government – the Rell administration, the legislature, and the judicial branch.
“Judicial is ecstatic. They’re very happy,” said Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, the longtime co-chairman of the judiciary committee. “This is what they’ve been asking for all along. It solves the problem. … This is the outcome that everyone wanted.”
The judicial branch will now have enough money to keep various courthouses open that were threatened with closure. No courthouses have been closed yet for budgetary reasons, but some law libraries have been closed. Lawlor did not reveal all the aspects of the deal, saying that the agreement is sensitive and some minor details still need to be worked out.
The judiciary committee and the Democratic-controlled legislature had threatened to hold up the appointment of the nominated judges, including Rell’s longtime budget director, Robert Genuario and public safety commissioner John Danaher.
“She has no control over the appointment of judges. We do,” Lawlor told Capitol Watch late Thursday afternoon. “If the deal doesn’t come together, they won’t be appointed. Period.”
That point was reinforced later Thursday by Lawlor’s fellow judiciary co-chairman, Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, who said the Democrats are taking a “trust, but verify” approach with the governor’s office.
Lawlor had said earlier in the week the administration needed to relent and address the judicial branch’s financial problems, or it needed to withdraw Rell’s judicial nominations. He said if Rell’s office didn’t budge, then the judiciary committee perform its statutory duty to hold a confirmation hearing Friday — but it also would vote by Monday, its deadline, to give “unfavorable reports” on the nominees when it sent them on to the House and Senate for final votes. Then, he said, they wouldn’t reeive those final votes and the nominations would die.
The pressure apparently worked. Now that Rell’s office and the judicial branch have an understanding, McDonald said that the Democrats’ plan to give the nominees “favorable reports” in the committee vote Monday — but they also will hold any vote to give them final approval in the House and Senate until after both chambers approve a budget bill implementing the terms of Thursday’s deal to help the judicial branch.
That judicial budget bill would be transmitted immediately to Rell for her signature, McDonald said. Only after that will the judicial nominees receive votes for final legislative approval, he said.
Lawlor said that none of this was aimed at the judicial nominees personally. He said five of the nine judicial nominees are personal friends of his, and the issue was about principle – not personalities. The nine nominees were potential pawns in a power struggle between all three branches of government.
Rell’s spokesman, Rich Harris, said the administration will have no comment on the latest development.
Rell and the judiciary committee had been facing a stare-down over Friday’s hearing at the judiciary committee.
“It’s not always just about money,” Rell said earlier Thursday. “I don’t think money is the entire issue. … I think the judicial branch feels that they need to have some autonomy, and I can certainly understand that. … If the legislature passes a budget, and it requires us to do lapses, everybody has to participate in that.”
Rell noted that money is given to the judicial branch in a lump sum, and the judicial administrators make the decisions on whether courthouses or law libraries would be closed.
In another development, Rell said Thursday that she did not remember any red flags being raised before she nominated prosecutor Brian J. Leslie of Wallingford to be a Superior Court judge. Leslie has since asked for his nomination to be withdrawn.
“It has been a while since I reviewed that background check,” Rell told reporters. “But from our review, they felt that he had disclosed everything. … I don’t remember that there was a red flag raised, but it’s been a long time. I don’t remember any red flag being raised. … I read the background checks. It’s just been a long time since I looked at them.”
Leslie, picked by Rell as one of her 10 new nominees for Superior Court judgeships, abruptly asked Monday that the governor withdraw his nomination — and she did so.
Leslie’s judicial chances were torpedoed by the publication Sunday of a column by The Courant’s Kevin Rennie, who reported that Leslie was denied a promotion in 2002 — and then later started “subverting” the chief state’s attorney’s office’s Medicaid fraud control unit, according to sworn testimony by Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Paul Murray in a 2005 deposition.
Rennie’s column can be read by clicking here.
In 2006, The Courant’s longtime court reporter, Lynne Tuohy, wrote, “The prosecutor, Brian Leslie, offered to halt the prosecution if Weber agreed not to sue the Medicaid Fraud Unit, but Weber declined. Leslie then offered to drop the case unconditionally, but then-Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Paul Murray overruled him. Leslie asked that he be removed from the case, citing ethical concerns about continuing the prosecution. In December 2003, Murray moved to have the case dismissed.”
Tuohy continued, “Weber testified against Murray’s reappointment as deputy chief state’s attorney before the Criminal Justice Commission in June 2005. Murray told the commission, “I apologized to Mr. Weber for the way this case was handled, but I think it ended in a respectable manner.”
Earlier Thursday, Rell spoke in a radio interview that she was moving ahead with her nomination of the judges.
“I am not withdrawing the judges,” Rell said. “I don’t have money to simply hand out because they want it” in the judicial branch.
Rell noted that the courts have 22 openings for judges, and her nomination of nine judges represents less than half of that total. As such, the money for the judges should already be in the judicial budget, she said.
“This is not new money,” Rell said.
House Republican leader Lawrence Cafero said he expects that there will be 31 vacancies for judges by the end of 2010. The clash over the judges, he said, is part of a delay tactic that has “more to do with the hope that it will be a Democratic governor to fill those vacancies.”
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