As Habersham County gets into the thick of its budget debates over the next eight weeks or so, there will be things added to the budget and other things removed.
The decision about what to cut will no doubt be based on the finite resources of the county’s available funding, and for some programs, a few thousand dollars might make or break a particular project.
Meanwhile, Habersham County continues to foot the bill for Magistrate Judge Gerald Johnson to sit at home.
Through April 15, the county has paid Johnson $42,795.23 while he has been suspended by the Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC) in the wake of a domestic incident on Oct. 18, 2021. He has been charged with four ethics violations by the JQC and is awaiting a decision on his future.
The county also is paying Interim Judge Wink Verdery, and to date the county has paid him $1,541 for 26.8 hours of work. At least that is for work actually being done in Johnson’s absence.
This is down to a taxpayer money issue. It is unlikely after reading the accounts of the incident that the JQC will allow Johnson back to the bench, though it remains a tiny possibility. That decision is out of the hands of the county leadership.
How long this will continue is anyone’s guess, as the Georgia Supreme Court has not yet listed a date for oral arguments to take place. Johnson has the rest of this month to respond to the ethics charges that were formally presented to him on March 31.
It is difficult to remove a judge from his seat, as it is with all elected officials, because our system does not want to be flippant in circumventing the will of the people in democratic elections. Streamlining that process is a dangerous path to walk, and making sure proper checks and balances are done is the very foundation of our government.
While Johnson is indefinitely suspended with pay, he is taking the taxpayers’ money and returning nothing. This is one of those sticky situations where the county is out the money and has no control over the situation.
But Johnson does have control, and he could step down from the bench.
Everyone of us has made a mistake, and Johnson is beloved by many in our community. It is highly possible that he has been forgiven as a man and as a husband for his mistake. As we have reported, Johnson was not even arrested during this incident, though the Hall County District Attorney’s Office still has an open investigation into that aspect of it.
Either way, officials who hold the public trust are held to a higher standard, and while Johnson can reconcile the issues that led to this unfortunate incident in his own life, there is no place for this kind of conduct on the bench.
The citizens who are paying his salary deserve better, and they deserve to know their magistrate judge is held to the highest moral and legal standards afforded us.