Judges vote to soften hard-rule proposal

Bill Gang

Thursday, March 25, 1999 | 11:09 a.m.

Clark County's district judges voted Wednesday to reject a proposal that would have limited their vacation to a month a year and another that would have required them to spend 25 hours a week in the courthouse.

Sources inside Wednesday's closed meeting, which judges originally said would be open, said the majority of judges voted to turn down rules that would limit their vacation days and require them to be present in the courthouse at least most of the day.

The judges, who are paid $100,000 plus a variety of benefits, rejected a proposal to limit their vacations to 21 working days annually -- in essence, a month off each year.

They currently have unlimited vacation days that they can take at their own discretion.

The judges also turned down a proposal that would have them work 40 hours a week, with at least 25 of those hours spent in the Clark County Courthouse.

Instead, the majority approved recommending that court hours be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a requirement that judges generally be available during those hours -- but not necessarily in the courthouse.

Currently judges, as elected officials, are accountable only to voters. The chief judge has only administrative duties and no authority over other judges.

However, Nevada Supreme Court Chief Justice Bob Rose noted in his state-of-the-judiciary speech to the Nevada Legislature early this year that a couple of judges aren't carrying their share of the load and has made it clear to judges that a system giving the chief judge authority to supervise other judges is not only inevitable, but imminent.

The judges' vote is only a recommendation to the Nevada Supreme Court, which will set the formal rules. The judges will meet again today to discuss more of their recommendations.

Discussions at Wednesday's meeting often revolved around whether judges, as elected officials, should be regulated as if they were state employees or whether the sole criteria should be whether the work gets done, the sources said.

Some judges conceded that there is a quagmire because the criticism of a few judges affects the court's overall image and overshadows the successes of the system.

Another issue involved what has generally been regarded as an inequity in work loads between judges who specialize in civil cases and those who handle criminal cases.

Several Clark County judges -- primarily those with the time-consuming civil calendars -- have been critical of some judges with less demanding criminal calendars who decline to help their fellow judges.

A proposed rule would have authorized the chief judge to assign overflow trials to judges whose own trials settle or end in plea bargains or require that judges help out in other ways.

But the recommendation adopted Wednesday would limit judges to their specialties when being assigned extra work, so criminal judges still would not be able to help civil judges.