Governor’s Council, Problems with the Industrial Accident Board, can they be fixed?
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The Industrial Accident Board appointments, unlike other judicial appointments are term appointments.
The term is a six year term.
The Industrial Accident Board also has a board which reviews the judges and may determine a judge to be “unqualified”, thus preventing their reappointment.
Unfortunately it has been the current practice to allow “unqualified” judges to continue serving past the end of their term, currently up to two years past the expiration of their term.
At the Governor’s Council hearing on August 1 another issue regarding the Industrial Accident Board came up.
The administration had submitted a nominee for consideration to replace one of these holdover judges.
As the Governor’s Council prepared to vote on the nominee, the issue of the length of this nominee’s term was brought up. Members of the Council expressed their understanding that the length would be to fill out the remaining term, the administration wanted a new six year term. The vote was tabled.
The Governor’s Council is clearly doing their job by properly advising the Governor, hopefully he will listen.
The administration should make appointments for positions that have expired, and judges that have been determined to be unqualified should be the priority for replacement.
Audio of the August 1 meeting may be heard on my website:
PatrickMcCabeGovernorsCouncil.com
As well as audio of recent hearings of the nominees submitted to the Governor’s Council.
To learn more about the council and what it is currently doing please check out my site
patrickmccabegovernorscouncil.com
and like it on facebook
You can listen to complete audio recordings of recent hearings of nominees submitted to the Governor’s Council as well as complete audio recordings of their meetings.
Patrick McCabe
Candidate for Governor's Council District Two
Primary Thursday September 6, 2012
George Williams
12:13 pm on Friday, August 17, 2012
Come on guys. The real question is why do we keep the Governor's Concil, period. It is anachronistic and useless on top of that. The GC is one of the things that gives MA a bad name as fiefdom for hacks. Name 3 of the sitting concilors. Do you know who your councilor is? I didn't think so.
Patrick McCabe
5:43 pm on Friday, August 17, 2012
One of the reasons I have been blogging about the Governor's Council is to inform people of its function and the issues it faces.
Obviously you are getting your information from another source, I'm not sure what your source is or how reliable it is.
On the one had you acknowledge that most people know little about it on the other hand you claim it is giving Massachusetts a "bad" name, which is a contradiction.
There are plenty of elected offices that most citizens have no idea who holds them, should we simply dissolve our "democracy" and if so what would you want in its place.
The Governor's Council performs an important function, holding public hearings on judicial appointments, would you prefer that a governor be able make these lifetime appointments without any oversight?
If you that is your view, fine, but you would be the first person that I know of that holds that view, which is kind of extreme.
I realize the media ran a bunch of stories urging that the Governor's Council be done away with, most of them were ill informed and poorly written, you should take care where you get your information from.