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Kouros to land with prosecutor
NWI Times
Feb 18, 2005
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/mark-kiesling/kouros-to-land-with-prosecutor/article_5ee0a693-e9f8-5c1b-a267-0fe792f717dc.html
Unlike Elvis, Lake County Judge Joan Kouros will not be leaving the building when she involuntarily steps down Feb. 25.
Well, technically she won't be in the courts building in Crown Point, but she will remain employed by Lake County government in the prosecutor's office.
Prosecutor Bernie Carter confirmed Thursday he's offered Kouros -- who was removed from the bench by the Indiana Supreme Court -- a job as a deputy prosecutor in the office's child support division in Gary.
"She is a very intelligent person who had problems on the bench with her management skills," Carter said in a kind understatement. "It's important we put her in a position where she is not in management at all. Some people are not made to be judges and in the long run, I think she knew that, too."
Her car, like her office, was filled with so much uncompleted paperwork that another judge was moved to once remark that if she were in a car wreck, she'd die of paper cuts.
When Kouros was taken off the bench and replaced temporarily by retired Porter Superior Court Judge Tom Webber, she went to Carter and asked him about getting a job, the prosecutor said.
"We tried to come up with some place we could utilize her skills and child support is where we felt she could best serve us," Carter said.
I'm not in favor of using any office in county government as an employment agency for the otherwise unemployable, but Kouros performed adequately in her previous tour of duty as a deputy prosecutor.
Still, I wonder how this is going to go down with some of the prosecutors she regularly berated mercilessly in court, particularly veteran deputy John Burke, who clashed with Kouros so often he was finally moved out of the courtroom after she issued a silly contempt citation against him that was later tossed out.
"I'll keep them apart, you know that," Carter said. "No way am I going to have her in an office with John Burke. She's going to be at 4th and Broadway in Gary, and there is no reason for her to come out to Crown Point, ever."
Carter said the judge's father, East Chicago City Councilman Gus Kouros, exerted no pressure on him to hire his daughter.
And Carter also was very candid when he said that "insurance must be a big factor for her," as the county will continue to pick up the cost of her medical treatment for multiple sclerosis.
That's the key. It would be a tough sell for her to join a law firm with her pre-existing condition and the cost to go into private practice and pay insurance would have been prohibitive.
She'll be making about $48,000 -- the top of the range, but still less than half what she made as a judge.
On the other hand, she was removed from the bench so often that she was less than half a judge anyhow.
For the sake of the taxpayers and of Kouros, I wish her better luck in her return to the prosecutor's office.
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