A bill to restore a circuit court judgeship in Marquette County has passed the state House.
The State Court Administrative Office recommended the elimination of said judgeship in 2012; it was vacated through attrition in 2017.
Marquette County’s current circuit court judge and the bill's sponsor Rep. Sara Cambensy say the county needs another circuit court judge to handle an overload of drug and veterans cases.
“Marquette County alone deals with about 25 percent of our court cases in the UP, so it’s a very busy court system," Cambensy said.
Veterans specifically make up about 10 percent of the county's population, and many are finding themselves in the court system.
“We really thought it was important that we look at maybe a specialty judgeship, a specialty court that deals specifically with our veterans as well as those drug cases". Cambensy said. "Some of the cases we see go through our courts tend to be our veterans and tend to need kind of a multi-prong approach to helping them get through those issues and certainly deal with some drug and alcohol abuse issues".
If the Senate passes the bill, and the governor signs it, a new judge could be appointed this fall.