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Judge posts to stay vacant

Blair not among counties to have nominees confirmed

State lawmakers are moving forward this week with votes to confirm nominees to fill vacant judicial seats in nine counties. But Blair County — which has two vacant seats on its five-member judicial bench — isn’t among them.

“It’s purely a budgetary issue,” state Sen. Judy Ward, R-Blair, said recently when asked about the developing plans for filling some vacant judicial seats, but not in Blair County.

“It’s a pared-down package from what we could have considered,” Ward said.

The package of nominees, considered Monday by the state Judiciary Committee during a livestreamed hearing, includes Huntingdon attorney Ray

Ghaner, who is expected to be the first person to fill that county’s newly created second judicial seat. An appointment will be valid through December.

“This will give Judge (George) Zanic some help in a county that has had only one judge,” Ward said.

During this year’s primary and general election, Huntingdon County voters will elect a second judge to take office in January 2026 and serve a 10-year term. Ghaner has already announced his intention to run.

Blair County President Judge Wade A. Kagarise, when asked Monday about Blair County’s exclusion, acknowledged ongoing efforts to secure a judicial appointment.

“I am disappointed that Blair County wasn’t included in this most recent judicial package,” Kagarise said Monday. “The other judges and I have advocated to the lawmakers and the governor of the need to fill our vacancies.”

The state’s appointment process to fill judicial vacancies remains political, with nominees needing support from Gov. Josh Shapiro and two-thirds of the state Senate.

Kagarise spoke of having written letters in the spring and fall of 2024 to the governor. In early 2024, the county bench had a vacant seat because former President Judge Elizabeth Doyle lost her bid for retention at the end of 2023.

In 2024, the county also developed a second vacancy after first-year judge Fred B. Miller became ill and died unexpectedly in November.

Those events have left the county’s judicial workload currently divided among three judges — Kagarise, Jackie Bernard and David B. Consiglio — instead of five. And to handle the workload, the judges are relying on help from the county’s senior judges — Jolene Kopriva, Daniel Milliron and Timothy M. Sullivan — and on visiting judges from outside Blair County.

In addition to Ray Ghaner in Huntingdon County, the other judicial nominees, as reviewed Monday and listed online, are: Anthony McDonald to serve in Columbia and Montour counties; Simquita Bridges, Alyssa Cowan and Derek Riker to serve in Allegheny County; Mark Powell in Lackawanna County; Mackenzie Smith and Louis Mincarelli in Chester County; Matthew Schimizzi in Westmoreland County and Michele Alfieri-Causer in McKean County.

That list of proposed appointments also stirred criticism among state lawmakers from Philadelphia, where its court is operating with nine vacancies on a bench that typically has 93 judges.

In a story published Friday by the Philadelphia Inquirer, State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams said the list of appointees was developed without input from the Philadelphia delegation.

Williams described that exclusion as an insult, but other lawmakers disagreed and told the Inquirer that the Senate considers judicial appointees on a rolling basis. In 2023, the state Senate confirmed 10 judges, including five from Philadelphia. But in 2024, no judicial vacancies were considered or filled.

Ward said there may be another chance for Blair County to get an appointed judge through the end of the year.

She said that if a candidate running for judge wins both the Republican and the Democratic ticket in the spring primary, that could be the basis for pushing through an appointment in connection with a new budget year starting in July.

“If it seems like they’re going to be elected in the fall, the argument can be made that we might as well get them in there and get them going,” Ward said. “We’ve done that before, so there’s precedent for it.”

She also acknowledged that there’s no guarantee of that happening.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.

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