Welch facing a dilemma
Local lawmaker must vote on bill that will affect her husband's authority as juvenile judge
January 16, 2006
by Kurt Van der Dussen, HeraldTimesOnline.com
Submitted by Linda Brady, District 7

The Welches are in a jam.

State Rep. Peggy Welch, D-Bloomington, faces having to decide whether to vote for or against a bill with a section that could make it harder for her husband, Monroe Circuit Judge David Welch, to do his job.

The major fiscal bill of the 2006 session, House Bill 1001, has a provision that would limit juvenile judges' discretion to send troubled kids to institutions. Instead, the county's Office of Child Services would decide that.

Welch and other juvenile judges would be allowed to deviate from that decision - but would have to issue a public finding of their reasoning that includes an estimate of any added costs the office would incur.

And while the bill would cap child care costs for counties at this year's level for the future, with the state picking up the increases, the county would have to cover the added cost if the judge overrode the office.

One piece of the puzzle

All of which puts Rep. Welch in a tough situation, because the proposal is just one part of a huge bill with lots of financial implications for local governments, some good. She might favor most of them and want to vote for it - but in so doing vote to reduce her own husband's judicial authority.

Hence the jam, which she discussed at the Statehouse.

She said when she, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee reviewing the bill, first heard of the provision, she called Judge Welch to get his take on it, "and he said 'No!'"

But that doesn't mean that Rep./wife Peggy Welch will vote the way Judge/husband David Welch would like.

"Dave and I talk about policy issues, and he'll be the first to tell you I have independent opinions," she laughed.

She said she wants to consult Monroe County and other local officials on how the overall bill affects them and what they think of it, before she decides how to vote on it.

As it is, she didn't vote on it in committee. She said committee Democrats chose to abstain on a vote to amend the bill to add amendments including the one on juvenile judges. The committee Democrats then were in a caucus to discuss how to vote on the full bill when Ways and Means Chairman Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale, held a committee vote on the full bill as amended and passed it out without them present.

The problem of appearances

Welch's situation raises the prickly issues of disclosure and appearance of impropriety. Do House rules require her to disclose a conflict of interest or abstain from a vote on something that affects her so closely?

No, she said. But "I try to be cognizant" of the look of such situations, she said.

For example, she said, when the judicial pay raise bill came up for a vote at the end of the 2005 session, House Speaker Brian Bosma officially excused her from voting at her request because a pay raise for her husband so directly affected her own financial situation.

And in committee earlier this month, she said when the current issue was being debated, she said she told colleagues that "I talked to our juvenile judge, who also happens to be my husband," about it.

She then relayed his belief that judges' discretion in placing juveniles shouldn't be limited and "unintended consequences" could occur.

She said the Ways and Means Committee needs to be concerned about the cost of juvenile placements to the state, "but I am also concerned about the future of the child."

She said there could be pressure on a child welfare director or employee in the interests of money "to do what is less instead of what is best" for kids in terms of placement or treatment.

The judge's view of it all

Her husband the judge agreed.

Judge Welch said Friday the state's "big picture" goal is to spread limited child welfare resources more equally across the state and its smaller counties by controlling costs.

But he said, "it may not be in the best interests of the child" if judges are limited in what they can do with juvenile placements. "It can easily have unintended consequences," he said.

He said that sometimes judges have to try different options with kids to find out what works, and he doesn't want to see his ability to do that undermined.

It also may be very hard to predict the added cost of sending a kid to a particular facility instead of the one the child welfare office chooses because you may not know how long the child will need to be there.

As for the spot his wife the state representative is in, "I just give her my views and my perspective and trust her to look at the rest of the bill and make the right decision. I have to trust her judgment.

"I can tell you the one thing I always have lobbied her for without success is the judicial pay raise," he joked.