Shhh!Don't tell anyone, but Northampton County judge Stephen Baratta is seeking retention this year. In fact, he's on the inside track to be our next president judge.
Thanks to a midnight payraise enacted by our state legislature, he's raking in nearly $150,000 a year. He has spent about a year in lavish and totally unnecessary new quarters. It cost taxpayers at least $43 million for the judges' new complex, complete with individual judicial potties, private floor and even their very own private dining room. We still don't know the exact cost because, in addition to being overbudget, the project is still behind schedule. In the meantime, we peasants eat lunches in dust-filled hallways or at desks.
Although our judges are very well paid, some insist on supplementing their incomes by teaching at local colleges. Perhaps if jurists spent a little more time in their Taj Mahal, probation officers would not to need to "borrow" signature stamps to execute routine orders. Perhaps the men and women in black could even stop their own court administrator before he tried to have county cars serviced at some garage owned by one of his cronies.
Future President Judge Baratta shows no embarrassment over this mess. In fact, back in November, he bragged in a radio interview that he wished he could take us all on a tour of his new digs.
Whee!
Baratta, as I've told you before, has even snubbed Democracy Rising PA, a grassroots movement seeking integrity and citizen confidence in government. This group forwarded a candidate questionnaire to every common pleas judge seeking retention. Let's look at some of the tough questions Baratta is ducking.
Is it right for judges to hire their relatives and friends for important positions in the court system?
Is it right for judges to have secret meetings with lawmakers and governors about matters such as the pay raise?
Is it right for courts to issue orders without opinions that explain their legal authority and reasoning?
Is it right for courts to conceal administrative documents that deal with how judges spend tax dollars?
I'm sorry, but there's only one explanation for Baratta's refusal to answer these simple questions - judicial arrogance.
Don't we already have enough of that?
10 comments:
hey Bernie, you might want to call this guy the most effectively kept secret b/c he certainly doesn't sound like something I'd like to label "best" anything.
Sorry, I'll stop playing word games.
The bar association has even done a "secret poll" of its lawyers. It hasn't done that for 20 years or more. It will release its results before the election, showing that Steve's the man.
If someone were to make a concerted effort, Baratta would be dumped.
People are upset with judges, who have increasingly isolated themselves from the public they supposedly serve. NC's Taj Mahal, which PJ Freedberg once praised as a "commitment to justice," is viewed by the public, employees and bar as a "commitment to decadence." Many of these guys don't work very hard either. I don't think the public would be very pleased to learn the extent to which very few judges are around.
I don't like to see community service defendants ordered to serve breakfasts at the churches of a judge's tipstaff. That's not community service, it's slavery. I don't like the control they have over so many workers, which lends itself to nepotism.
That is a pretty ugly caricature of the judge you have there. Is steve that physically horrifying in real life? somebody better find an airbrush!
Bernie just please save Mayor Quimby for Philip Mitman!
Judicial retentions are almost always approved because voters simply don't like to vote "no" to anything. It's the reason propositions (in those states daring enough to allow them) are so carefully worded. The wording of several recent "open space" measures are a good example of this.
The last round of statewide judicial retentions were a different story, however, and cause for hope. Go get 'em Bernie. Northampton County can do better than most of what sits on our benches. And this character is a good place to start.
Vote NO on retention.
Agreed.
It is a shame. I know Judge B. or I should say knew him as a lawyer. Nice guy, then he became a judge. Don't get me wrong I am not saying he's still not a nice guy but I would not know, he doesn't give me the time of day. During his campaighn I and others would kid him about once you are a judge no more 'Steve' just 'Your Honor', he would say no way. But then the Robe disease hit and he like many others took on the qualities of a demigod.
I'm not really judging him or the others, I think Judge Freeberg is a nice guy, but they are detached. Moran seems to care about young people but his conceit is unbearable. It is a shame Bernie because I am a strong believer in our court system and judicial temperment trumping legislated sentences. But the way judges act, they bring about their own problems with the public at large.
You realize anyone commenting on this will get 5 to life for a parking ticket.
Anon 12:39,
Individually, most of them are nice people. Collectively, I disdain them. My criticism has nothing to do with their rulings or anything like that. They have become too isolated, and as you say, have begun to assume they are demigods. The longer one remains a judge, the more that is likely to happen.
The private floor, secret entrance, obsession over security can all be justified. But it also deifies a judge who doesn't make a conscious effort to avoid it.
Baratta concerns me bc he has snubbed a relatively innocuous questionnaire, is part of a system in which nepotism is the order of the day and hasd failed to separate himself from the monstrosity foisted upon us in the form of that Taj Mahal. What's worse, he actually praised it.
I feel that when he is retained, the most likely result, we're in for more of the same. He'll soon be PJ, and then he will just continue in the grand tradition started with that new courthouse.
I really see a difference over the past severasl years. I remember the days when we'd all sit down with Judge Palmer in the morning for a cup of coffee. Now the judges have their own prvate dinming room so that they don't have to interact with us riff raff. They did NOTHING about the employees who became ill, but marched en masse into council chambers when one member meekly suggested that perhaps they did not need that goofy wind sensitive fountain.
i think the days of having coffee clutches with the judges are long gone the society we live in today i belive has forced that upon them.unfortunately people became ill during the construction period and they should've shown compassion they like everyone else didn't no what to do about it. having adderessed it admits guilt doesn't it? they could not have forseen what troubles could occur during construction more than anyone else. the fountian you mention hey if there ain't no beauty you gotta make some beauty right? maybe someday we can add some food coloring and bubbles . have a nice day.
The worst thing about the judges is how much effort they put into becoming party boys to get the nominations, and then they complain, even in speeches welcoming new judges, about how little they make.
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