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The state commission tasked with reviewing judicial misconduct complaints is optimistic about its chances for a moderate funding increase after a positive response from state lawmakers at a hearing in Albany this week.

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct formally asked for a budget increase of about 6 percent from lawmakers, who were surprised to hear the panel responsible for sanctioning the state's judges has struggled to keep up with a rising number of cases in recent years.

“I feel very good about how this session went,” Commission Administrator Robert Tembeckjian said after his testimony. “I've never heard as much support as I did today.”

Tembeckjian said during his testimony that the state's recent budget allocations for the panel haven't kept up with a rise in demand, which has affected their ability to efficiently resolve allegations of misconduct.

“For the last decade or so, our caseload has increased by 25 percent at the same time that our staff has decreased by 25 percent,” Tembeckjian said. “That's largely due to the fact that eight of the last nine years, the executive budget has recommended a flat budget for the commission, a $0 increase.”

Cuts have been made by the commission during that time because it has had to pay for legally mandated salary increases and rent hikes with virtually the same amount of money annually, Tembeckjian said.

Last year was the first year Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive budget included a funding increase for the commission since he took office, according to Tembeckjian. There were also two years during which the final state budget included a minor increase for the commission after negotiations with the Legislature.

The current budget for the commission is set at close to $5.7 million annually, up from $5.4 million from 2010. Tembeckjian said at the hearing that if the budget had risen at the same rate as inflation, it would be $6.4 million today.

Instead, he asked lawmakers to negotiate a $359,000 increase for the commission in this year's spending plan, which would bring their total budget to $6.1 million. Tembeckjian said with that money, it could hire two attorneys, up to two more investigators, and services to more quickly produce transcripts from commission proceedings.

“The time it takes us to resolve our matters has increased in part because we don't have the resources for certain fundamental things, such as transcription services,” Tembeckjian said.

The commission, according to Tembeckjian, produces 12,000 pages of testimony each year from its proceedings, but it doesn't have a stenographer or other service for transcriptions. Instead, those pages are produced by staff at the commission, which adds to the time a case is resolved.

“We produce those transcripts in-house by converting audio recordings in slower than real time to paper and that adds anywhere up to six months to the resolution time or disposition time of one of our complaints,” Tembeckjian said.

That's because of staffing at the commission, which has gone from 51 full-time employees in 2007 to 38 today. The number of complaints evaluated by the commission during that same time period has risen from 1,700 each year to 2,100.

The slower rate of those cases being disposed coupled with the rise in complaints has led to the all-too-familiar problem among the state's judicial system: backlog. Tembeckjian said, at the end of last year, the commission still had 200 complaints of misconduct that hadn't been resolved.

State Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Democrat from Manhattan who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, was surprised to hear the number was that high.

“So, there are 200 judges currently hearing cases that are under some sort of scrutiny by your commission, but no action has been able to be taken because of your shortage of resources?” Hoylman asked. “That is unacceptable.”

Most of those cases, if past years ring true, will be dismissed without the judge being sanctioned after a preliminary investigation by the commission. Only 19 judges were disciplined by the panel last year, two of which were removed from the bench. Special priority is placed on especially egregious cases, Tembeckjian said, but even those have been delayed.

“I would say of the more than 200 cases we currently have pending, without getting into the specifics of them because I'm bound by the confidentiality statute, there are probably five or six that I think involve allegations of gender inappropriate, homophobic, or otherwise personally unacceptable and revolting allegations,” Tembeckjian said.

Most of the judges sanctioned by the commission end up being town or village court justices, Tembeckjian said. Unlike state justices, those officials are not required to be an attorney to serve on the bench, which lawmakers suggested at the hearing could be why they find themselves frequently reported for misconduct.

State lawmakers have previously introduced legislation that would require any judge in the state to be an attorney, but Tembeckjian said the commission doesn't have a position on that change.

“I wouldn't want any interpretation of a commission discipline to be seen through the prism of my view of whether or not a judge in a town or village court should or should not be a lawyer,” Tembeckjian said. “If I were to say, for example, that all judges should be lawyers, and we were to discipline nonlawyer judges we would be subject to criticism perhaps for picking on those judges to make our legislative point.”

Several lawmakers, during the hearing, added their support for an increase in the commission's budget, including Assembly Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Dinowitz, D-Bronx, and State Sen. Liz Krueger, D-Manhattan. Krueger is the chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee, which largely negotiates and compiles the state budget in consultation with Cuomo and the Assembly each year.

“People do have complaints about judges they are not all founded but the only way for the state of New York to assure the public that our judiciary is one to be proud of and to believe can correctly protect the interests of all almost 20 million of us is to make sure that we have a commission such as yours and that we are providing you the resources to get your job done,” Krueger said.

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