Eight Bronx Supreme Judges over 70 Were Not Recertified as Part of an Effort to Trim the State’s Judiciary Budget

 

Forty-Six of the forty-nine Judges in the New York State Supreme Court system over the age of seventy will be retiring on December 31, 2020 in an attempt to help fill a ten percent or three-hundred million budget cut. Under state law Supreme Court judges are required to apply for recertification and undergo cognitive exams every two years after turning seventy, until they reach the mandatory retirement age of seventy-six.

Eight of the forty-six judges are from the Bronx. They are Civil Term Justices Ben Barbato, Robert Johnson, Donald Miles, Howard Sherman, and Fernando Tapia, Criminal Term Justices Lester Adler, Steven Barrett, and Nicholas Iacovetta. The elimination of these forty-six positions is to save Fifty-Five million dollars over the next two years, and avoid other judicial cuts to the New York State Supreme Court system.