Guilderland looking for a new town justice ASAP
Enterprise file photo — Anne Hayden Harwood
Celebrating with other Democrats on Election Night 2013, Richard Sherwood stands with Guilderland Town Justice Denise Randall. Sherwood resigned on Monday after being arrested on felony charges so the town board is looking for a replacement. Randall is still in her post.
GUILDERLAND — The town is accepting applications from Guilderland residents for town justice to replace Richard Sherwood. Sherwood resigned on March 5, a week-and-a-half after he was charged with grand larceny and scheme to defraud, both felonies.
Letters of intent and résumés should be received by March 20, the town board decided at its Tuesday night, after two board members thought that the one-week period initially suggested by Supervisor Peter Barber was too short.
The only required qualifications are that candidates be town residents and over 18, Barber said. Being a lawyer is not a requirement for being a town justice.
Sherwood is a lawyer and so are Guilderland’s two remaining town justices — Denise Randall and John Bailey.
Appointed justices who are not attorneys must complete a certification course, “Taking the Bench,” before they can hear cases, according to New York State’s justice court manual. Attorneys who are elected are encouraged, but not required, to take the course. The course is provided through the Office of Court Administration’s Office of Justice Court Support and includes an intensive introduction into criminal and civil law, as well as the administrative responsibilities associated with being a judge.
Guilderland’s appointee will serve through Jan. 1, 2019, Barber told The Enterprise, and would need to run in the November 2018 general election.
Judges do not run to fill unexpired terms; their terms start when they are elected, so the term will be for four years following the November election, said Matthew Clyne of the Albany County Board of Elections on Wednesday.
Barber told The Enterprise he could not remember a time in the recent past when Guilderland has had a justice who was not a lawyer. In Knox, James Corigliano has served on the bench since 2010; he is not an attorney but a former music teacher in the Guilderland schools. Most of the justices in the Hilltowns are not lawyers; their vocations range from a retired corrections officer to a retired transportation director and town supervisor. In Altamont, Neil Taber, who retired as justice in 2013 after decades in the post, was not a lawyer.
All justices are also required to take at least 12 credits in continuing justice education each year that they remain in office.
At the March 20 town board meeting, Barber said, the board will see how many applications it has received and decide what to do. “If we get 10 or so, we could do 10 interviews. If we get 50, we might have to make decisions about who to interview,” he said.
The goal is to “be as transparent as possible,” the supervisor said. But the interviews, he said, will be conducted in private, because those will involve “asking people about their qualifications, etcetera.”
Earlier, when the town board had considered meeting in executive session to discuss whether and how it could remove Sherwood — a meeting that became unnecessary when the state’s highest court suspended Sherwood, as of Feb. 27 — Robert Freeman, director of the state’s Committee on Open Government, spoke with The Enterprise about whether such meetings are required to be held privately, as is commonly believed.
Decisions about the hiring or firing of particular individuals may be held in executive session, but are not required to be, Freeman said at the time.
The goal, Barber said, is to appoint someone by April 3. The successful candidate will still need to go to judge school, he said. “It won’t be like they are appointed one day, and the next day they hear a full caseload.”
Randall and Bailey have assured him, Barber said, that they are confident they can handle sharing the responsibility for the entire caseload as long as “we kept to a rather quick process.”
If he gets any indication from the judges that the caseload in the interim is proving too much, Barber may call a special meeting of the town board to reconsider options such as having a temporary judge appointed.
Stephen DeNigris stood at Tuesday’s meeting and said that the board should expect his application. A Democrat, he ran for town justice against Sherwood on the GOP line in 2013. The court had had a significant backlog and so added a third justice post that year.
The problem has since been alleviated somewhat, DeNigris said, but he is still not sure it is “where it should be.” He suggested it would help if the court were to publish statistics on how long it takes to resolve cases.
In 2009, George B. Ceresia Jr., then the Third District Administrative Judge, recommended that Guilderland elect a third judge, after statistics showed it was the third-busiest court in Albany County. There was a delay in the creation of the position, because the town board had to approve it and agree to fund it, and then the state legislature had to authorize the decision.
The 2013 race was a four-way contest for two slots: Democrats Randall, first elected justice in 2006, and Sherwood, who had served as town attorney since 2000, faced off against DeNigris and Christopher Aldrich on the Republican ticket. The uncontested post was held by Democrat John Bailey, who remains in it today, having been re-elected in 2015.
Each of the Guilderland town justices earned $51,170 in 2017. The position is considered part-time, although the hours claimed by each judge every three months average more than seven hours per day, according to the town’s personnel administrator, Stacia Smith-Brigadier.