Applications open for position on 11th District bench

Interviews will be conducted in July.

By MARC KOVAC

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

COLUMBUS — Applications will be accepted through late next month from attorneys interested in serving on the 11th District Court of Appeals, which is based in Warren.

One will be selected to replace Judge William O’Neill, who recently resigned. The district covers Lake, Ashtabula, Geauga, Trumbull and Portage counties.

Keith Dailey, spokesman for Gov. Ted Strickland — who will ultimately name the replacement — said applications will be accepted until June 21, and a panel will conduct in-person interviews with finalists July 19. Members will then recommend three individuals to the governor.

“Typically, it takes the governor less than a week to make a decision,” Dailey said.

Panel members, selected by Strickland, are Debbie Bindas (Trumbull County), president of Trumbull-Mahoning County AFL-CIO Labor Council; Raymond Ku (Geauga County), attorney and professor of law at Case Western Reserve University; Donna McNamee (Lake County), freelance editor and writer and member of the Laketran Board of Trustees; George Keith (Portage County), attorney at Keith and Godward; Janet Carson, (Geauga County), owner of Insurance Diversified Agency; and Bill Bobulsky, (Ashtabula County) attorney at Bobulsky and Schroeder.

At-large members of the Ohio Judicial Appointments Recommendations Panel are Janet E. Jackson, president and chief executive officer of the United Way of Central Ohio; Meg Flack, League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Columbus; Doloris Learmonth, managing partner at Peck Shaffer and Williams LLP in Cincinnati; Joy Malek Oldfield, partner at Hill Hardman Oldfield LLC in Akron; and Charles Saxbe, a former state representative and senior partner at a Columbus law firm.

Applicants must be residents of the five-county area and younger than 70 on the day they begin their duties.

They must also be admitted to practice law in Ohio and have maintained their legal license for six years before assuming the judicial post or have served as a judge of a court of record in any jurisdiction in the United States, according to the governor’s office.

The term will extend through January 2009; the appointee would have to run in the November 2008 general election to continue thereafter.

mkovac@dixcom.com.