The
Rock of Sisyphus
By
Will Collette
Last
year, our state Representative Donna Walsh took some good-natured ribbing from
Providence Journal columnist Ed Fitzpatrick for her persistent efforts to get a
bill passed that would require magistrates to be chosen based on merit, rather
than politics.
Since
so many politicians have an interest in using magistrate appointments as
political patronage, each time Donna introduced the measure on behalf of Common
Cause of RI, it was shot down. Fitzpatrick awarded Donna the “Lifetime
Non-Achiever Award” for being willing to push the rock of Sisyphus every year,
against all odds. His column [no link available] was actually a glowing tribute
to Donna’s tenacity, but Donna’s Republican opponent in the last election tried
to portray it otherwise, but to no avail since Donna had
already embraced her role as a fighter against the odds.
One
of RI’s top political bloggers – and WPRI Channel 12 political reporter – Ted
Nesi included an interesting mention of Donna’s bill in his weekly
review of the state’s political news. Nesi actually catalogs some of the
many occasions where somebody who knows somebody got a magistrate gig for which
they may not have been qualified.
Here’s
what Nesi wrote:
Charlestown Rep. Donna Walsh has renewed her 13-year
battle to close
the loophole that lets Rhode Island’s senators appoint
court magistrates without the Judicial Nominating Commission vetting them
first. Magistrates “really are judges,”
Walsh told the Projo’s Katie Mulvaney in 2010. “It’s a
political-patronage system.” Among those who’ve received magistrate gigs over the
years: former Senate President Joe Montalbano
… John Harwood’s wife Patricia … Bill Murphy’s former aide Patrick
Burke … Gordon Fox’s former counsel John Flynn … and former Portsmouth Sen. Charles
Levesque.
Far from seeing this
as a problem, most Senate Judiciary Committee members say they think it’s good
that magistrate jobs go to so many people with Assembly ties.
But attorney Keven McKenna argues the main
reason so many magistrates have been named since the Judicial Nominating
Commission was put in place is because Democratic lawmakers wanted to hand out
judicial jobs even though the party hasn’t controlled the governor’s office
since 1994. McKenna thinks magistrates’ decisions are unconstitutional:
“Magistrates do exercise judicial power. They’re not stenographers. They’re not
sheriffs,” he said last year. “Chief judges and chief justices have no
authority to appoint anyone to exercise judicial power. Only the governor can
do that.”
Hopefully,
this will be the year for Donna’s quest to end with the enactment of a
long-overdue reform that will help to clean up Rhode Island’s justice system.