ALFRED, Maine – The York County Commissioners and part-time
Probate Judge Robert M.A. Nadeau are embroiled in a contest over changes
to the court schedule that commissioners charge have created a backlog
and that the judge willfully made after they denied him a raise in pay.
The judge strongly denies the commissioners’ charges, saying
in written communication with the county manager that they are
“misinformed, inappropriate, inaccurate and rejected.”
The
commissioners’ charges are contained in a five-page findings of fact
written earlier this month based on testimony at a hearing on the issue
in October. The accusations are the most recent against the judge, who
is facing disciplinary action before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on
Judicial Code of Ethics violations.
The issue before the commissioners began last April, when
Nadeau asked the commissioners to increase the number of days he works,
from the current two days a week at an annual salary of $48,498 to
either three days ($90,000) or five days ($120,000) a week.
Commissioners concluded Nadeau could continue to adequately
perform his duties two days a week, based on information provided by
Register of Probate Carol Lovejoy. They did raise his pay to $54,000 a
year.
In the next several days, according to documents attached to
the findings of fact, Nadeau told Lovejoy, among other things, to block
off time for research and writing, restrict the number of cases he
would hear and reschedule hearings from Wednesday and Thursday to Monday
and Friday – a change commissioners charge allows Nadeau not to work on
Monday holidays when the courts are closed.
Nadeau has said in both an eight-page letter and subsequent
email to County Manager Gregory Zinser that he made the changes so the
cases that come before him receive an adequate amount of his time. He
switched to Mondays and Fridays, he said, so he can prepare on Fridays
for Monday action.
Lovejoy testified at the hearing that the docket was current
as of April 2015, and backlogs of routine matters occurred only
afterward. But Nadeau said “the court’s schedule has historically been
plagued by a substantial backlog, particularly a trial backlog, that I
could never reduce.”
Commissioners said after listening to testimony at the
October hearing, “the facts clearly establish there was no emergency to
justify Judge Nadeau’s unilateral scheduling changes. Judge Nadeau has
deliberately manipulated the Court schedule to create a backlog of cases
in hopes of creating the appearance of need of more judicial time to
mask the true purpose to obtain a significant pay raise.”
Zinser said in a subsequent interview that because Nadeau is
an elected official and a judge, the commissioners can only request
that he make changes but can’t force him to do so. He said the court
loses about six days of court time under the current schedule, due to
Monday holidays.
The county is researching whether “we have to pay him for days he’s not technically here.”
Zinser said Nadeau is mingling contested, uncontested and
routine matters together to make his case.
He said routine matters like
name changes take as little as five minutes of the court’s time. There
has always been a backlog of contested matters, he said, but before
April it was only a two-week backlog. Now it is considerably longer.
Meanwhile, the SJC is considering an ethics infraction case
against Nadeau, who also has a private practice in Biddeford. According
to court documents, other lawyers have charged that Nadeau created a
website for his job as probate judge that linked to the website of his
private practice.
Full Article & Source:
York County officials say judge ‘deliberately manipulated’ court schedule to create a backlog
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