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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Ind. Courts - Linking of judges' pay to that of legislators decried at both federal and state levels

On May 10th, the ILB had an entry titled "Linking judicial and legislative pay has led to a 25% decline in federal judges' salaries." Some quotes from that entry:

This year the General Assembly passed a bill linking legislative salaries to those of Indiana judges.

Chief Justice Shepard and Justice Boehm wrote an opinion piece published in several Indiana papers last month in favor of the pay bill. * * *

Today Tony Mauro writes about federal judicial salaries in the Blog of Legal Times: "If low judicial salaries are in fact a constitutional crisis, as Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has warned, then the proximate cause of the crisis, in the view of many, is "linkage." That is, the 20-year-old practice of linking the salaries of federal district judges to the salaries of members of Congress and deputy cabinet secretaries. Because election-conscious members of Congress find it near-impossible to raise their own salaries, judges haven't gotten raises either."

That was judges' pay at the federal level. Today Judith S. Kaye, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, has an opinion piece in the NY Times titled "Free Judges' Pay." Some quotes:
Our judges have gone nearly nine years without even a cost-of-living adjustment, longer than any other judges in America.

Why no increase? It is not because anyone questions the need for raises, and not for lack of funds. The problem is the longstanding tradition of tying judicial pay raises to legislative pay raises. Albany is unwilling to bring state judicial salaries up to par this year without a pay raise for legislators, something that has been prevented by political divisions and other unrelated issues. [emphasis added]

My thoughts: It looks like just at the point in time when everyone else was trying to get out of the boiling pot, Indiana's judges may have been pulled in.

[More] Gary Welsh of Advance Indiana has just sent me this editorial from today's Rockford Illinois Register Star:

Whether or not lawmakers deserve a pay raise — and we think not — Illinois needs to find a new way to determine how its elected officials are compensated.

The current system is dishonest, complicated and unfair to taxpayers and lawmakers.

Legislators who have yet to agree on a state budget for fiscal year 2008 somehow managed to find money to add to the 2007 fiscal year so they could give themselves what amounts to a 9.6 percent pay increase.

Here’s how the system works.

The Compensation Review Board reviews salaries and decides when to recommend an increase. The pay raise goes into effect unless lawmakers vote to stop it.

Both chambers of the General Assembly need to reject the raise, but it’s not that easy. The way the resolution is worded means lawmakers vote yes to say no. The measure asks whether lawmakers should reject the Compensation Review Board’s recommendation. A yes vote means no raise.

A no vote sounds like they are being disciplined, but really it means they get more taxpayer money.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 7, 2007 04:21 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts | Indiana Government | Legislative Benefits