This reporter wondered out loud a few weeks back about the Ohio Supreme Court budgetary case pending between Lake County commissioners and former Juvenile Court Judge Bill Weaver.

This was just as Weaver, a Democrat, was retiring and attorney Karen Lawson, a Republican, was elected to his bench starting this month in her first time with the gavel.

What if, this muser wondered, Lawson took her own actions strong enough to make the Weaver-county legal case moot?

Aha! Next thing you know, on New Year’s Eve, the new judge fired eight staffers.

And do the initial budgetary savings and empty desks amount to enough to halt the case, which itself costs big bucks, before the all-Republican SUPCO justices?

Either way, it’s not happy new year news for anybody directly and indirectly affected.

--David W. Jones