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Monday, January 31, 2005
Ind. Courts - Uncoupling judges' pay raises from legislators'
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial today on judges' pay. Some quotes:
The best section of a Senate bill on judicial salaries uncouples judges’ pay raises from legislators’.This has been a long time coming. The portion of the bill providing automatic salary increases to judges, although well intended, should be excised. Even in robust economic conditions, the General Assembly should discuss and vote on salary increases or cost-of-living adjustments for judges.
Senate Bill 363 would provide automatic annual salary adjustments for Indiana’s judges in years when the General Assembly does not give a raise. The bill, which passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last Wednesday by a 9-0 vote, ties the annual cost-of-living-increases to the same level given to similar state employees in the executive branch. Those increases have ranged from zero percent to 4 percent since 2001.
Since when did it become appropriate for the legislative branch to dump the executive and judiciary branches in the same salary class? This bill, no matter how well intentioned, absolves the General Assembly from ever having to justify salary increases for judges, whose pay also affects magistrates and prosecutors. It essentially allows legislators to pass the buck while passing bucks. * * *
One of the great follies in the federal judiciary is that judges’ salaries are linked to Congress. In 2003, the Volcker Commission on public service called on Congress to delink judges from congressional pay increases. While the commission sympathized with legislators’ caution on raising its own pay at risk of raising the ire of constituents, the commission wrote that “members of Congress must make the quality of the public service their paramount concern when they consider salary adjustments for top officials of the other branches of government."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 31, 2005 09:07 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts