After trials, one judge changes practices
Court-ordered counseling under scrutiny amid secret financial interests
NWI Times
Jul 21, 2008
nwitimes.com/news/local/after-trials-one-judge-changes-practices/article_9757b204-a805-5e1f-95d6-be6e505dfec4.html
LOWELL | After hearing in recent federal trials about the hijinks involving court-ordered alcohol counseling, Town Court Judge Thomas Vanes decided to stop ordering his defendants to attend sessions at for-profit centers.
"I don't want to be in a position of ordering them to put money in a crony's pocket," Vanes said.
Not that Vanes feared perceptions about whether he was personally helping a "crony" with his own court orders.
Rather, he said after the recent court cases of Robert Cantrell, Deborah Riga and Nancy Fromm, he has grown weary of trying to untangle which firms are associated with various political players across Lake County.
His solution? He now is ordering defendants charged with drunken driving in his court to attend sessions with Alcoholics Anonymous, which are free.
Vanes' decision comes after recent disclosures that former Schererville Town Judge Riga earned about $44,000 by ordering defendants to attend classes in counseling and education businesses in which she had a secret financial interest.
East Chicago political figure Cantrell was convicted of not paying taxes on roughly $150,000 he secretly earned using his political connections to steer court-ordered counseling business to a firm owned by a crony of his.
Fromm, whose counseling business Addiction and Family Care paid Cantrell his untaxed profits in cash, testified last month about the highly political environment in which court-ordered business is regularly doled out.
Fromm told Cantrell's jury that she regularly received business in exchange for political support.
Sometimes she was awarded contracts for her own political activism, and in other cases Cantrell used his influence to convince judges to send defendants to Fromm's firm.
Vanes said he fears the system that Fromm described is not limited to her business alone.
"I've been around awhile, and I've heard various things about the agencies," said Vanes, a former Lake County deputy prosecutor who has been town judge in Lowell since 2000.
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