Tuesday, May 29, 2007
An 11-member panel will recommend three candidates.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — The process of selecting Judge Maureen A. Cronin’s replacement won’t be quick, the governor’s office says.
The new judge probably won’t be named before Judge Cronin retires July 1, said Allison Kolodziej, deputy press secretary for Gov. Ted Strickland, who will appoint the replacement judge.
After 13 years on the bench, Judge Cronin, 53, of Canfield Road, recently announced her retirement as a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge. She was elected as the county’s first female common pleas judge in 1994 and ran unopposed for re-election in 2000 and 2006.
Judge Cronin, who has 30 years in public employment, said she wants to explore opportunities to teach, mediate, be a visiting judge or seek another elected office.
The process of choosing her replacement will begin with selection by the governor in the next few weeks of six members of the Ohio Judicial Appointments Recommendation Panel from Mahoning County.
11-member panel
Under a process the new governor announced in January, those six local members will join five at-large members, who have already been appointed to the panel for renewable two-year terms, to form an 11-member committee.
In announcing the panel process, Gov. Ted Strickland said his goal was to make the judicial selection process “transparent and inclusive.”
The appointees from Mahoning County must include one member representing the local labor and consumer community and another representing the area’s business and industry interests.
Committee members serve without compensation. The panel consists of lawyers and nonlawyers, but lawyers are to be the majority.
Once the six selection panel members are appointed from Mahoning County, the vacancy and the names of those six panelists will be formally announced within days, Kolodziej said.
Applications
Applications must be received within 15 days after the first formal vacancy announcement, unless the committee decides otherwise. Applicants must be residents and registered voters in Mahoning County, must have held an Ohio law license for at least six years and be under age 70.
The judgeship pays $118,050 annually.
The panel then usually takes at least 10 days to review applications and select those to be interviewed. On the interview day, the panel will recommend to the governor the three candidates it deems best qualified.
The governor will usually make the appointment a few days later, Kolodziej said. The appointee will serve until the 2008 general election.
If the governor doesn’t make an appointment by July 1, Presiding Judge R. Scott Krichbaum or Administrative Judge Maureen A. Sweeney may ask the Ohio Supreme Court to select a visiting judge to serve in the interim, “especially if there’s a backlog of cases,” Kolodziej said.
Judge Cronin said she’ll finish as many cases as she can before July 1 and ask the Ohio Supreme Court for permission to return after her retirement to finish cases in which she has already made evidentiary rulings, rather than turning them over to a new judge.