Petition to recall North Las Vegas judge OK’d

North Las Vegas voters will get a chance to decide whether they want to oust embattled Municipal Court Judge Catherine Ramsey.

The Nevada secretary of state on Tuesday approved a petition to recall the judge. Ramsey said she has retained the law firm Mueller, Hinds and Associates and will be “vigorously” challenging the validity of the recall.

The group behind the recall submitted 2,717 signatures on May 28, coming in before the June 9 deadline and over the 1,984 signature requirement.

The recall committee, launched in March, argues the judge should be booted for misappropriating city money to pay for a private lawsuit, asking employees to perform personal errands on city time and reducing defendants’ sentences arbitrarily, causing the city to lose out on revenue it would have otherwise gained from the cases, according to a news release.

In a press release announcing that its petition had qualified, the group also reiterated that it believed Ramsey had missed too many days on the bench — a point it said was under review last week. The release said the committee wanted to “firmly express once again that Judge Ramsey has missed a substantial amount of time on the bench.”

Ramsey has contended the recall is politically motivated and many of her days off were for mandatory conferences and city events. The city and the recall campaign have denied that the city is involved in the recall.

Ethics complaints filed in March echo the judge’s position that the city is trying to oust her. The formal complaints to the Nevada Commission on Ethics were filed by two longtime city human resources employees who were laid off last month.

According to the complaints, North Las Vegas Chief of Staff Ryann Juden bragged about scripting a City Council meeting in which Mayor John Lee called Ramsey’s alleged excessive absences “immoral.”

The mayor’s statement was brought up repeatedly in the recall effort against the judge and was used in the recall’s initial news release.

According to the complaint, Juden and Lee had a meeting with Ramsey in which Juden told her he could “make a pamphlet of half-truths, and those stupid low-income citizens wouldn’t know what to believe.”

Juden did not respond to calls, texts or email from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Behind the recall effort is a powerful political team, including political consultant David Thomas, who is known as the “Judge Maker.”

Thomas has said he would provide a breakdown of the recall efforts’ financial backers but has yet to do so. Contact Bethany Barnes at bbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Find her on Twitter: @betsbarnes.

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL