Wanted: More judges

In an Op-Ed he penned in these pages on Friday, Mayor de Blasio recommitted to his long-term promise to shutter all Rikers Island jails within a decade and urged Albany’s cooperation to help make that possible. Quoth him: “The mass incarceration crisis did not begin in New York City, but it will end here.”

So one would think that de Blasio, who also rightly wrote that innocent-until-proven-guilty defendants must not “languish in jail for months or years while they wait for the wheels of justice to turn,” would do everything in his power to speed the adjudication of criminal cases by slashng the backlogged docket of overburdened judges. Not so much. The very day his Op-Ed appeared, the mayor chose to appoint only a fourth of the judges he is permitted to under the state Constitution.

As it is there prescribed, the mayor selects Family Court and Criminal Court judges, each for terms of 10 years. The mayor also gets to appoint interim Civil Court judges as vacancies arise. This occurs when an elected Civil Court judge resigns, usually because he or she has been elevated to a higher court.

Last fall, that happened a dozen times, starting with their selection by party bosses in September and culminating in rubber-stamp elections in November.

For months, de Blasio knew the vacancies were coming. On Jan. 1, the benches emptied. He filled just three, leaving nine open, nine too many.

Last year, eight slots sat open until May, when they were filled thanks to prodding by Councilman Rory Lancman.

Hoping to avoid another long lag, Lancman wrote to de Blasio six weeks ago, urging him to get his ducks in a row.

A mayoral press aide said that the Advisory Committee on the Judiciary has completed reviewing candidates and de Blasio will soon be interviewing them and making his picks.

Speed it along, sir.