Lateness matters, your honors

On Nov. 5, this column lowlighted 18 people who are now serving as either Civil Court judges or state Supreme Court justices in New York City. The dozen and a half, all who won their essentially fake elections on Nov. 8, had failed to either file a personal financial disclosure statement or complete the mandatory campaign ethics training, both required for all judicial candidates, in the alloted time.

So now that they’ve been on the bench for a month, we checked again.

We blew the whistle on a Saturday. Disclosure scofflaws Carmen Pacheco and Pat Hayes Torres filed the following Monday. Edward King did his on Nov. 10, two days after polls closed and Pamela Patton Fynes waited until Nov. 18. Beverly Tatham, sitting in judgment of others since Jan. 1, still hasn’t filed.

The form was due months earlier, 20 days after they became candidates. As we noted in the fall, Maria Gonzalez and Mary Alice Kavanagh were also late.

As for the campaign ethics training, due to be certified as complete 30 days after they began running, jurists Edward King (the same guy who also blew off his ethics form), Cenceria Edwards, Sabrina Kraus, Dakota Ramseur, Lisa Sokoloff, Ann Thompson and Richard Velasquez only certified in November after we exposed them. They joined Torres, Pacheco, Tatham and Kavanagh in being late on this, as well as Sophia Hershman, Connie Morales, Dan Quart, Myrna Socorro and Craig Walker.

We conduct this exercise annually as a public service, making sure that judges follow the rules. On Primary Day in 2018, we flagged soon to be Brooklyn Surrogate Harriet Thompson, writing that she “has already violated court rules by failing to complete the mandatory judicial campaign ethics training.” Those rules state: “A candidate who fails to complete the training at all, or fails to complete it in a timely manner, will be subject to discipline.”

When Thompson agreed to resign, one of the Commission on Judicial Conduct charges against her was being late. The other judges are so warned.