Constitution Commission proposal: Local judgeships should be appointed, not elected

In the close confines of the Florida Keys, residents often get to know their local judges, either from repeated jury calls or contact outside the courtroom.

That often makes for interesting times when election time rolls around with ballots that include races for Monroe County court judges, or the judges in the state’s 16th Judicial Circuit, which includes all of Monroe County.

Any attorney with the legal qualifications and residency now has the right to challenge a local judge in a nonpartisan race for a six-year term. Monroe has four county judges (misdemeanors and some civil cases) and four circuit judges (felonies and some civil cases).

That process of picking judges statewide could change significantly under a proposal formally filed Tuesday by a member of the Florida Constitution Revision Commission.

Proposal 58, if eventually approved by the Constitution Revision Commission and endorsed by 60 percent of Florida voters as an amendment in November 2018, would appear to effectively end open elections for judges at the circuit and county level.

Rather, it appears judges would by appointed by the governor from a list prepared by a judicial nominating commission.

Sitting judges seeking a new term then would face a “merit retention” vote at election time, basically a yes-or-no vote on a new term. That system now is how Florida Supreme Court judges and judges on state courts of appeal earn new terms.

“That’s a horrible, horrible idea,” W. Reagan Ptomey, who served 30 years as a Monroe County Court judge before retiring this year, said Friday. “My personal observation is that you do not want politicians appointing people to the bench at the trial-court level.”

“That’s where the court comes nose to nose with the public every day,” Ptomey said. “You don’t want a judge who was appointed because of friendship or favoritism. The appointment may have had nothing to do with qualifications for the job.”

The constitution proposal was nominated by Revision Commissioner Frank Kruppenbacher, an attorney and chairman of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority.

Dustin Hunter, a Key West attorney serving as president of the Monroe County Bar Association, said the election process for local judges appears to have served Florida Keys residents well.

Hunter said he was not speaking for the bar association but would bring up the issue with members if the amendment appears headed for state referendum.

Appointing local judges “is not something that I would be in favor of,” Hunter said Friday. “If a judge has been doing a nice job, they should be able to hold on to their seats.”

Ptomey was challenged only once in his tenure as a sitting judge. For the most part, judicial candidates largely campaign on their backgrounds and cannot comment on how they would handle certain cases.

The 37-member Constitution Revision Commission meets every 20 years and has the authority to put proposed constitutional amendments directly on the November 2018 ballot. None of the commission members are from Monroe County; six are from Miami-Dade.

After asking the public for suggested amendments, the commission in mid-October rejected all but six ideas from more than 2,000 proposals submitted.

Commission Chairman Carlos Beruff said in a statement that commissioners “recognize general themes and ideas that were submitted by Floridians, and then craft proposals in the appropriate legal language. Several commissioners have created and sponsored proposals that reflect those [public] ideas.”

The commission must decide by May which amendment proposals to put on the November ballot 2018.

With reports from the Miami Herald

This story was originally published November 3, 2017 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Constitution Commission proposal: Local judgeships should be appointed, not elected."