The idea of eliminating the state's nominating commissions from the selection process for certain judges and adding a requirement for Senate confirmation is a move in the wrong direction.

The Senate Judiciary Committee took the wrong turn when it voted to put even more politics into the selection of Florida Supreme Court justices and judges of the five district courts of appeal.

The legislation, SJR 1494, by Sen. Rod Smith, D-Gainesville, would eliminate (for those courts only) the nominating commissions that select candidates for the governor to consider. The governor's choice then would have to win confirmation by a majority of the Senate, which now has no part in the process.

The committee should have proposed instead to put things back as they were until two years ago. Before, the governor directly controlled only three of the nine seats on each nominating commission, the Florida Bar appointed three more members, and those six then appointed the final three. That had been the system since Gov. Reubin Askew created the first nominating commissions more than three decades ago. Restoration may have to wait for another governor as selfless as he was.

Askew's system had been good enough for all of his successors until Jeb Bush came along. The 2001 Legislature turned the 25 commissions into little more than patronage committees for the governor. Some questionable appointments have resulted.

Even with that weakness, the nominating commissions still serve some valuable purposes by publicly screening applicants and, at least at the trial court level, by assuring community input. However, the process would be even more trustworthy -- especially now that the governor picks all the members -- if they were required to debate their recommendations in public. This issue is one of the most conspicuous exceptions to Florida's vaunted "Sunshine" principles. Regrettably, the Florida Bar is lobbying against a proposed constitutional amendment (SJR 2250, HJR 1135) to let the sunshine in.

The Bar is on firmer ground in its opposition to Smith's bill. While it might not produce the paralyzing political disputes that dog judicial nominations in Washington -- if only because Florida senators can't filibuster -- it still represents another step away from the preferable system that Askew established. It would also effectively limit the pool of potential applicants to judges of lower courts, prosecutors and public defenders, who wouldn't have to worry about losing clients while their applications languished on the agenda of a Senate that meets only two months annually.

Six of the seven senators who voted for the bill in committee had voted two years ago to put the nominating commissions under the governor's thumb. For some of them, SJR 1494 reflects pangs of regret. But to replace one power grab with another is not the way to make things right.

(To give Smith credit where he earned it, however, his timely objection saved the Senate from voting to allow court clerks to discard evidence -- including DNA -- before defendants exhaust their appeals. Senators had approved this as a committee amendment to an uncontroversial bill. Most probably didn't know what they were doing, but that's no excuse.)

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