Bring in the judges

The 2009 Annual Report for the Texas Judiciary has been released and along with the usual interesting statistics, there is one thing that stands out to me this year.

The numbers from Bell and Lampasas Counties suggest that we need “9.5” district court judicial officers, while we supposedly only have “6.5” (here, page 46). The explanation for this, according to the report, is that we are among the top twenty or so counties who have the highest average populations served per district court.

The most obvious question, then, is – who is our “.5” judicial officer that we already have?

The next most obvious question is – where are we going to put the three new judges? The district courthouse is done, and the county is almost finished. I understand that there will be a couple of extra county courtrooms available. I don’t suppose there would be any problem with putting a district court on the “county court side” of the new courthouse.

Or, maybe we could get two more county judges and just give them jurisdiction over all family law cases. That would certainly free up the district courts!

Bell County | jeffparker | January 2, 2010 3:50 pm