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Sunday, September 11, 2005

Ind. Courts - Council gives in, judges get stipend

"Council gives in, judges get stipend" is the headline to a story by Larry Thomas in the Jeffersonville Evening News/New Albany Tribune. Some quotes:

The Clark County Council and the county's judges appeared to be headed for a showdown this week. But a day after cutting a $5,000 local contribution to the judges' salaries, the council relented.

The state pays trial court judges $110,500 per year, but gives county councils the options of contributing up to $5,000 annually to their salaries. Until July 1, judges had been making $90,000 per year and had not had a pay increase from the state in nearly eight years.

Due to the $20,500 increase from the state, the council voted 6-0 on Wednesday to take away the local contributions to the salaries of the county's four judges and one magistrate, and place the money into a fund that pays jury expenses. On Thursday, following an impassioned plea from Clark Superior Court No. 3 Judge Steven Fleece, the board voted 4-1, with one abstention, to return the money to the judges' salaries.

Fleece had asked the council to reconsider its decision for all of the judicial salaries, but was particularly concerned about Magistrate Ken Abbott, who received only 80 percent of a judge's pay but has most of the authority of an elected judge. * * *

According to the National Center For State Courts Survey of Judicial Salaries, published Oct. 1, 2004, the pay for Indiana's trial court judges had been 49th among the 50 states and District of Columbia. At the time the survey was published, only West Virginia and Montana paid judges more poorly. The state's decision to increase the pay by $20,500 - which was about $10,000 less than what was recommended by a commission appointed to study salaries for state officials - puts Indiana's trial court judges at about the national average as of a year ago.

Some council members seemed less moved by sympathy than economics. During his Thursday morning discussion with the panel, Fleece implied that he could give 15,000 to 25,000 traffic tickets per year to municipal courts and the county would lose tens of thousands of dollars in general fund revenues. * * *

Councilman R. Monty Snelling said he feared a judicial mandate and subsequent lawsuit over the funds.

"The judges have hair triggers when it comes to lawsuits," Snelling said. "We're trying to work with them and hopefully they'll try to work with us, in the future."

If the above sounds somewhat familiar, it was also the basis of a story in the Louisville Courier Journal, quoted in this ILB entry last Friday.

And a reminder that my first monthly column will appear in the September issue of Res Gestae, which I am told will be in the mail this week.

My column is called "To elaborate ...". I will use the longer format to investigate and expand upon topics first mentioned in The Indiana Law Blog.

The topic of my first column is judicial mandates and the separation of powers. I plan make a copy of the column available here, to ILB readers, this Wednesday.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 11, 2005 04:25 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts