Try waving off a subpoena with a “no thanks” if you’re served with one. Good luck. That’s a privilege reserved only to Colorado’s highest court and the secretive and insular Judicial Department over which the court presides.

It seems those in charge of the state’s courts can swat away a subpoena – even when it’s part of an investigation into allegations of misconduct by the very same court system. In a sense, it’s the judge sitting in judgment over his trial.

As reported this week by The Gazette, the Judicial Department refused to comply with a subpoena issued five months ago by the state’s Commission on Judicial Discipline.

The commission has been trying to enlist the high court’s cooperation in a commission inquiry into the alleged cover-up of misconduct by judges.

The commission included that revelation in a report it released Tuesday at the first gathering of a legislative committee studying the investigation and discipline of judges for misconduct, and the need for reform. The commission said the Judicial Department scoffed at the subpoena, issued in late January. The department claimed the commission had no subpoena power.

It’s the latest troubling development in a disturbing saga involving the courts that has been the focus of The Gazette’s coverage. The Gazette has exposed what amounts to a fundamental breakdown in accountability by the department and the Colorado Supreme Court. That’s over and above specific allegations of misconduct that are alarming in their own right.

Early last year, the public learned the court’s then-chief justice allegedly approved a multimillion-dollar contract for a high-level employee who faced firing and had threatened a tell-all sex-discrimination lawsuit. The suit promised to reveal years of alleged judicial misconduct that went unpunished or was covered up.

The Commission on Judicial Discipline also noted in its report to the legislative committee how it was thwarted in beginning its investigation into that scandal when the Supreme Court refused to issue the funding the commission needed to pay investigators it hired.

The headline-making allegations in fact spurred multiple investigations and audits, as detailed in Gazette coverage – and the inquiries have run into one hurdle or another.

Hence, the commission’s report this week. It recommends nine changes to the discipline process, including firming up the right to subpoena evidence.

Several of the recommendations would require a change to the Colorado Constitution, which established the commission. Those changes could only be implemented by a statewide ballot question put to voters.

Our hope is the bipartisan legislative committee will carefully consider the recommendations in an effort to call the state’s highest court and the Judicial Department to account. The need for reform is clear and urgent.

As it is right now, allegations against judges are subject to a commission whose independence is compromised and its authority second-guessed by the very same judiciary. That has to change.

Colorado cannot afford to have a judiciary that is above the law it is charged with interpreting and enforcing.

Denver Gazette editorial board