State employees’ pay may be frozen, but Louisiana’s judges—from the Supreme Court to city courts—got a 2.1% raise, effective July 1, and will receive another automatic bump next year as Louisiana suffers through what has been called the worst budget crisis in her history, Gannett Louisiana reports.
In 2013, the Legislature approved a bill by Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Metairie, that locked in five years of automatic raises for judges to bring their pay closer to the southern average.
“I think it sends the wrong message,” Sen. Neil Riser, R-Columbia, who was one of only nine senators to vote against the bill, tells Gannett Louisiana. “Our judges do a great job, but I don’t think automatic pay raises are appropriate.”
After initial 2013 raises of 5.5% for Supreme Court justices, 3.7% for courts of appeal judges, 4% for district judges and 4% for city and parish court judges, all are to receive a 2.1% raise annually through 2017.
Supreme Court justices will earn more than $172,000 in 2017 after five years of raises totaling about $21,000. Louisiana’s median household annual income is $44,555. Meanwhile, separate executive orders from Gov. John Bel Edwards are in place freezing state employees’ pay as well as hiring. Martiny, who is chairman of the Judicial Compensation Committee, says he was surprised the bill passed so easily in 2013.
“I told them (the judges) I didn’t think I could get it passed,” he says. “When we came up with this plan five years ago the Supreme Court said it could absorb the raises within its budget. Things change. Obviously, it would have a harder time passing now.”
Gannett Louisiana has the full story.
