By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
October 4, 2024
In addition to recommending that four Indiana counties receive the extra judicial officers they had asked for, the Indiana General Assembly’s Interim Study Committee on Courts and the Judiciary advised the legislature to consider reallocating resources, rather than always adding more judges and new courts.
The study committee approved its report to the legislature as part of its second and final hearing on Thursday. Included in the report were recommendations that Elkhart, Hamilton, Lawrence and Vigo counties all receive the additional judges, magistrate judges and courts they had requested at the committee’s first hearing Sept. 26. The committee did not recommend that Spencer County get the magistrate judge it wanted.
Also, the committee passed a motion advising the General Assembly to keep Indiana’s judicial resources at a level that meets the need without having too few or too many judicial officers and courts.
Committee Chair Rep. Chris Jeter, R-Fishers, asked the committee to make “an overall recommendation” to the General Assembly to maintain the current balance between the caseload and the available judicial officers. He pointed to the “Indiana Trial Courts 2023 Weighted Caseload Report,” which found the state needs 480 judicial officers to handle the new filings and, at present, has 488 judicial officers.
Jeter said the legislature is going to have to shift its mind-set from adding courts all the time to reallocating resources, because some counties are growing and others are not. Taking away judges and closing courts will be a tough conversation to have, he said, but lawmakers need to watch taxpayer dollars by making sure the judiciary is staying right-sized for the state as a whole.
“It’s just that if we’re going to continue to add (judges and courts), we’re going to also have to probably look to subtract to stay at the right size level,” Jeter said.
In making its recommendations about individual counties’ requests for more judicial help, the committee relied on Indiana’s weighted caseload measurement system. The need is calculated by using the number of judicial officers a county has and the number of case filings in that county’s courts. A utilization rate of 1.0 indicates a county has the right number of judges for its caseload, while a higher utilization rate indicates more judicial officers may be needed and a lower rate may signal fewer could handle all the work.
Among the five counties that appealed to the study committee last week for additional resources, Hamilton and Vigo counties had the highest need as shown by their respective utilization rates of 1.34 and 1.33. Elkhart County’s weighted caseload measurement rate was slightly less at 1.18, while Lawrence County’s rate was 0.90.
The committee recommended the legislature fund Hamilton County’s request for two judges and two new courts. Also, the committee recommended Vigo and Lawrence counties each receive one new magistrate judge and Elkhart County get three new magistrate judges.
Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, gave a warning to Elkhart County courts. He complimented Hamilton County for taking the initiative to hire magistrates who significantly diversified the bench. However, he noted that Elkhart County courts did not have any people of color among its judicial officers.
“This will be my last time supporting magistrates for Elkhart County if I don’t see any changes in their makeup on their court judges,” Taylor said.
Spencer County asked for a single magistrate judge, but the study committee voted 12-to-5 against recommending the additional judicial officer.
Rep. Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, led the opposition, saying Spencer County Circuit Court Judge Jon Dartt had made a nice presentation, but the court’s utilization rate of 0.64 indicated it had the necessary resources to meet the needs.
Sen. Liz Brown, R- Fort Wayne, agreed. She also pointed out that Dartt told the committee the county’s weighted caseload numbers were incorrect and, she said, the legislature might have more work to do when adding or subtracting judicial resources.
“We could have all the other courts coming in telling us that their numbers are wrong and we don’t have the ability, on the fly, to examine the numbers and the underlying issues that they have,” Brown said. “I think that, again, suggests that we need to do a deeper dive and also study the courts that, at least, on their face in our weighted caseload, report to be underutilized.”
However, Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, said the committee should give Spencer County a positive recommendation, so the conversation can continue during the 2025 legislative session.
“I don’t disagree with Rep. Steuerwald at all and I think he might be right, but I would like to, at least, give the county the ability to come to us in the regular General Assembly session and make their case, and then we vote up or down on that,” Freeman said.
Brown replied that the study committee has told the counties they have to “fit the formula” in order to request more judicial officers. Other counties that have low utilization rates may also need more help, she said, but they might not have come before the committee with a request because, based on the weighted caseload measurement, they were not busy enough.
“We’ve set the rules,” Brown said. “(We’ve said,) ‘This is what we’re going to look at,’ and we’ve never varied from that.”
Brown and Steuerwald were both supportive of Jeter’s push to get the study committee to recommend that the legislature assess and shift judicial resources, rather than just giving more to the busy courts. Both said the General Assembly should take a closer look at counties that are declining in population to see if they have the caseloads to sustain all their courts.
“Sooner or later, the fiscal people,” Steuerwald said, referring to the legislators who craft the state’s biennial budget, “are going to stop adding courts, if we don’t address the issue that some counties, according to the weighted caseload, have too many courts.”
Taylor supported the recommendation, but he cautioned that the possibility of eliminating courts could have unintended consequences. He alluded that counties with fewer cases could start worrying that they “might be on the hit list,” so they could fill their dockets with more cases to get a higher utilization rate.
“We’ve got to be careful when we make those statements,” Taylor said, “because nobody wants to lose a court, I would imagine, in any county in the state of Indiana.”
Dwight Adams, a freelance editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.