Tom Rickhoff just said no!
MySA.com: Mental health cases prey on frustrated judge
Web Posted: 11/22/2006 10:24 PM CST
Elizabeth Allen
Express-News Staff WriterEach Tuesday, one of Bexar County’s two probate judges heads out to San Antonio State Hospital to decide if mental health patients need to stay in the facility for up to 90 days.
Except this week, when Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman drove from Austin to do it, after Probate Court No. 2 Judge Tom Rickhoff decided he couldn’t take it anymore.
“In an effort to reduce angst and conflict in my life, I need to step aside from the mental health docket now,” Rickhoff wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to Probate Court No. 1 Judge Polly Jackson Spencer.
“I worry about it too much because I have lost faith in a system …” he continued, describing the merry-go-round of treatment and release for Texas’ mentally ill.
Rickhoff sent the letter one week after he was re-elected to a four-year term in a race in which his opponent made an issue of his work ethic. He said the timing was no accident.
“The last thing I wanted to do was trivialize something as important as a mental health docket in a political race,” he said.
Yeah, that was really it. He didn’t want to trivialize it by telling the voters he was going to refuse to do part of his job because it was too important. Too important to his re-election that is. How many voters would have gone to the polls to vote for him had they known he was going to refuse to do part of his job “in an effort to reduce angst and conflict in his life?” If he wasn’t going to perform the job he was seeking then why did he run in the first place.
MySA.com: Columnists:
With a paycheck guaranteed for another four years, I suppose Rickhoff figured he had nothing to lose by taking such a drastic measure.
The taxpayers are paying him $148,000 a year to do the job to which he was elected. His bench does not come with a menu of duties from which he can pick and choose.
Unfortunately, Bexar County voters have no voice in the matter for another four years.
How nice for him to be allowed to change his job because he is stressed. I wish I had that option.
Filed under: Bexar County Probate, Tom Rickhoff, bexar county, dishonesty, double-speak, election, mental health
