(Seguin) — Do you want to be the newest judge in Guadalupe County?
Following the recent retirement announcement, by County Court-at-Law 2 Judge Frank Follis, the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court is inviting interested individuals to submit their applications for the position.
Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher says the appointment will be to fill Follis’ unexpired term of March 1, 2021 to December, 31, 2022.
“What we are talking about doing is basically asking those interested individuals that wish to seek the appointment for that unexpired term to basically fill out an application, a questionnaire to go through and basically apply for the job. The commissioners court will then receive those, review those applications, narrow it down to, depending upon the number of interested individuals, maybe three or five or maybe a few more. We’ll just see how it goes and then interview those individuals and have discussions. As commissioners court, we’ll go through that process just like we did for constable in precinct 1, county judge back in 2012 so like I said, we’ve been through this process a couple of times,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher warns that although lengthy, the application is designed specifically to ensure that the best candidates are considered for the position.
“We are talking about 30 plus questions that the state of Texas uses on judicial appointments. We modified a few of those and took out some. We didn’t want to put potential judges in a situation where they had to give opinions on the types of cases that they may be hearing and where they can cause problems later on. So, we tried to eliminate some of those things but at the same point, this is a very important appointment. We wanted to have a good understanding of a individual applying for that judgeship so we wanted to be thorough and it’s going to take a little bit of time for individuals to go through but again, we think there’s going to be quite a bit of interest and we wanted to have all the information we could going into it,” said Kutscher.
While the paperwork and job description are clear for the judgeship, Kutscher says the salary will still need to be hammered out upon the selection of their candidate.
“So, one thing that hasn’t clearly been determined exactly yet is the pay of this position. We know exactly what it is for the judge that currently holds the position because of his years of service. I think it’s between $183,000 and $185,000. A new judge without the years of service will be somewhere around $157,000 to $158,000 without the supplements or the additional pay. So, I want to be clear that we don’t have that determination yet on whether it would be the pay of the current position because it’s the unexpired term. My recommendation would be with those judicial pay structures being so new, I doubt we’ll find any cases where this has taken place but we set out with this unexpired term to be filled that it be at the lower amount unless you get a judge that served, that had years of service and appointment that qualified and justified based on what the legislature approved to make that pay whatever it would be,” said Kutscher.
In laying out the process to fill the position, county officials on Tuesday also thanked Judge Follis for his many years of service to the county. They say with over 42 years of practicing law, they know that filling his shoes will be a difficult one.
Applications for the County Court-at-Law 2 position are now available on the county’s website. The deadline to submit an application is 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13. County officials say they hope to decide on an appointment by December first if not by the end of the first week in December.