Governor Has Plan to Resolve Pay Increase for Judges Dispute

Paterson Says His Bill Would Resolve Suits Over Judges' Pay
The New York Law Journal by Joel Stashenko - January 8, 2010

Governor David A. Paterson suggested yesterday that a bill he submitted last year to create a commission to review every four years pay levels for the judiciary could resolve the legal fight over judicial salaries that shifts to the state's highest court next week. Mr. Paterson's bill, submitted in May, received scant attention because of the paralysis caused last summer by the power struggle between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. The commission would not review state lawmakers' salary levels on a quadrennial basis, under Mr. Paterson's bill. Legislators and judges both received pay raises for the last time in 1999. In a statement yesterday, Mr. Paterson said the long pay lag for judges "is wrong and has the potential to do great harm to our very accomplished judicial branch." The Judiciary, he said "deserves…a straightforward analytical approach [to periodic pay raises] and I urge all parties—judges, litigants and legislators—to consider adopting such an approach as a means of settling all of the pending matters before the Court of Appeals." The bill calls for the Legislature to approve or reject a commission's pay recommendations, on a straight up-or-down vote. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Paterson's counsel, Peter Kiernan, said a compensation commission would not authorize raises retroactively. He also said the governor's actual support for a raise recommendation by a commission would depend on budgetary conditions, when raises would take effect and other "abstracts." The three suits before the Court for oral argument on Tuesday revolve around the constitutionality of "linkage" between the judges' raises and issues at the Capitol unrelated to the judiciary or how much judges are paid.