The Pulaski County Council has finalized an additional appropriation for circuit court overtime costs. Judge Michael Shurn was given permission Monday to spend another $10,000 on employee overtime.
He said his staff has been dealing with about 1,500 cases that were transferred from Superior Court, following Crystal Brucker Kocher’s appointment as Superior Court judge this past summer. “There was some talk, ‘Why did you get all of her cases?’ Well, we operate under Supreme Court Rules and ethical requirements – if it looks bad, it smells bad, if there appears to be an issue,” Shurn said. “An ex-prosecutor can’t be the judge on the same case they were a prosecutor on. This is what Indianapolis told us to do. This is what they do all over the state. So that’s why we got the influx of the cases.” The implementation of e-filing at the same time increased staff members’ workload even more, according to Shurn.
The additional work has had a ripple effect in other county offices. So many cases were scheduled during early mornings and evenings that Prosecutor Dan Murphy asked Shurn to extend the court’s posted hours.
But now, Murphy said, things have calmed down enough that he no longer needs a few additional appropriations he’d requested. “On discussing it with Judge Shurn, it appears that he’s backed off on that, and we’re no longer going to be setting regular hearings, daily hearings, between 7:00 and 8:00 [a.m.] and 4:00 to 5:00 [p.m.],” Murphy said, “so we’ll be back to the regular 8:00 to 4:00 hours, which that means I don’t need to have my staff working additional hours. So at this point, then, I’m not going to be requesting that you follow through on the additional appropriations.”
To help reduce the workload going forward, Judge Shurn said he’s working with Murphy to streamline the process of issuing orders. “When he has support cases for paternity, he has a staff member right there, and they do the orders on the spot and we kick them out and hand them out,” Shurn explained. “Now I’m going to meet with Murphy over the December holidays, and we’re going to try to do this in some of the criminal cases, so we could kick out standard orders and hand them out to the people so Sherry doesn’t have to go back on evenings and weekends. So we’re trying to mitigate some of this stuff.”
He said he’s also working with the county’s public defender board to maximize state funding.
