Traverse City Record-Eagle

Grand Traverse County

April 6, 2008

Editorial: Judge needs to set record straight on settlement

David Stowe isn't the first local politician who used taxpayer money to bandage a self-inflicted wound.

He surely won't be the last.

But Stowe is a judge -- he heads up the 13th Circuit Court's Family Division -- and that position should carry with it certain responsibilities, including honesty, integrity and transparency.

So it's up to public servant Stowe to fully, truthfully explain to Grand Traverse area taxpayers why he used nearly $70,000 in court funds last year to settle former court employee Michael Stein's threatened whistleblower lawsuit.

Stowe fired Stein in March 2007, shortly after officials with the State Court Administrator's Office closed its probe of allegations Stein made against his boss. Among them: Stowe improperly routed court funds to a woman who used to work for the court, as well as to her new employer.

A Record-Eagle investigation into the Stowe-Stein settlement revealed more, including allegations that Stowe and the woman who formerly worked for him, Cynthia Marie Curry, began a personal relationship sometime in 2002, a few months after she took a job as a juvenile probation officer in his court.

Stowe also presided over Curry's divorce, an action finalized shortly before she took the court job. But child custody matters kept that case alive, and Stowe continued to preside over her divorce case from 2002 until early 2006, despite being her employer the bulk of that time, as well as her alleged boyfriend.

Beyond the inherent impropriety -- and danger -- of a judge engaging in an employer-employee relationship, Stowe compounded his bad judgment by failing to recuse himself from the divorce case.

That series of bad decisions came back to haunt him in a big way by early 2007, prompting the showdown with Stein and, ultimately, Stowe's subsequent use of taxpayers' money as a shield to preserve his job.

For months, the Record-Eagle tried to get Stowe's version of events. He continually refused, other than one obtuse statement, and his strategy for dealing with exposure stemming from news stories appears to be nothing more than hoping the whole thing blows over.

That's not to say he's completely silent. For months -- as word spread of the Record-Eagle's research -- Stowe's surrogates mounted a whisper campaign designed to smear Stein.

They termed him a disgruntled employee. They said health problems fogged his thinking. Stowe's stand-ins tried to portray the judge as a victim of a meritless surprise attack, a reference to Stein's complaint about Stowe's behavior to the State Court Administrator's Office.

But that spin won't gain traction. If Stein, an attorney and former assistant county prosecutor, was a train wreck of an employee, Stowe could have fired him without fear of recrimination. The taxpayer-funded $70,000 parting gift wouldn't have been necessary.

Instead, Stein's threatened whistleblower suit symbolized an ace Stowe couldn't trump. A lawsuit could well have required Stowe and Curry to submit to depositions under oath, as well as possible testimony during a public trial.

Goodbye, clandestine relationship, and with it, any murkiness over when it began and whether Curry and her post-court employer benefitted from her alleged ties to the man who controlled the Family Court's purse strings.

And quite possibly, hello, Judicial Tenure Commission, the state agency that investigates potential judicial wrongdoing.

Stowe's supporters contend the SCAO vindicated the judge with its brush-off of Stein's allegations. But questions abound about that probe, including whether the SCAO conducted an adequate investigation.

Did the SCAO, in fact, even delve into the alleged Stowe-Curry personal relationship? If not, it speaks volumes about its legitimacy.

Publicly, Stowe thus far has said just this:

"If you just speak to knowledgeable people in the community you could easily be dissuaded from disparaging our court," Stowe said in his lone on-the-record statement to the Record-Eagle.

An astute reader may note that Stowe didn't deny wrongdoing. His primary aim was to paint the newspaper as the at-fault party for "disparaging" the court.

But the court's not the issue here; it's all about Stowe and the series of truly injudicious decisions he made. Any black eye absorbed by the court over this matter is his and his alone.

It's time the public hears from the judge.

Text Only