Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Committee hears proposals to add judgeships and to clean up judicial statutes
Loading...
Summary
Representatives urged the committee to add judicial positions in St. Charles and Miller counties to address growing caseloads; the committee also considered HB 2968, a statutory cleanup to align circuit descriptions and resolve an enabling-act ambiguity for a recently created judgeship.
The House Judiciary Committee heard multiple proposals to add judicial positions and reviewed a cleanup bill to align statutory descriptions with the state's circuit realignment.
Representative Ben Keithley (District 101) presented HB 24-27 to add one circuit and two associate judges in St. Charles County, emphasizing rapid population growth and docket crowding and saying the positions would be staggered in election timing. Committee members pressed on staffing, courtroom space and the fiscal differences between adding circuit judges versus associate judges.
Representative Don Mayhew (District 124) presented HB 3,086 seeking another associate or circuit position for Miller County. A local attorney who practices in the 26th Circuit described detailed caseload data: he said Miller County's single associate judge handled about 2,049 cases in 2025 and cited seasonal tourism and new industry as drivers. "We are asking to move this up by about 4,300 people" in terms of the population trigger for adding a second associate, the witness said, pointing to second-home populations and local growth that swell caseloads in peak seasons.
Committee members asked whether alternative options (senior judges, commissioners, or treatment-court staff) could help; witnesses and sponsors said senior-judge availability and funding are limited and that some circuits have no commissioners, so adding judgeships better addresses sustained workload imbalances. Representative Parker introduced HB 2,968 as a cleanup to reflect the shift to numerical circuit descriptions and to provide enabling language for a 2026-added circuit judge; Eric Jennings, government relations counsel for the Supreme Court, said the cleanup would prevent future statutory ambiguity and noted Senate Bill 218 corrected many procedural issues for future positions.
Ending
Sponsors said they would coordinate with Senate sponsors and the judicial conference on precise timing and language; no final committee votes on these public-hearing bills were recorded in the transcript.
