Where’s the judicial restraint? State judges suing for raises is shameful with ordinary people hurting BY DANIEL T. WEAVER For The Sunday Gazette
I’m having a hard time working up any sympathy for Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, her cohorts on New York state’s highest court, or other judges in New York state who are whining because they haven’t had a raise in 10 years. The lowest paid full-time city court judge in New York state still makes $108,000 per year, while Judge Judy makes $156,000. According to an Associated Press article in The Daily Gazette on April 2, “Compensation for New York’s 1,250 state-level judges now ranks 49th among states, which Kaye said is “shameful considering the enormity and complexity of their case dockets.” What I think is shameful is that several judges have already sued the state of New York, meaning you and me, and Judge Judy is preparing to sue New York state if the Legislature doesn’t approve judicial raises. What is also shameful is that Bernard Nussbaum, a litigation partner in the firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and former counsel in the Clinton White House, is going to handle the lawsuit for these wealthy clients for free. Meanwhile, defendants often have to appear in courts presided over by these same judges with inadequate defense because they cannot afford a good lawyer. GROWING DIVIDE It’s also shameful to hear judges whining about how little they make, when they make two to three times the median New York state family income. When you combine their incomes with that of their spouses, the gap between their income and the typical family’s income in New York becomes a chasm. Judge Judy’s individual income is almost four times more than the typical family income here in Montgomery County. Apparently, some judges are upset because they have had to borrow money to send their kids to college. So what? Join the human race. The only difference is they are borrowing money to send their kids to Ivy League and other prestigious colleges, while the rest of us are borrowing money to send our kids to state schools and community colleges. The important question isn’t how much our judges are making in comparison to other states, or how long it has been since they have had a raise. The real question is just how much money does a person need? Tolstoy wrote a short story, which James Joyce said was the greatest short story ever written, called “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” The protagonist, a peasant named Pakhom is greedy for land. The Bashkirs tell him they will sell him all the land he can walk around in one day for 1,000 rubles. He has to be back at his starting point by sunset, but he gets so greedy he walks farther and farther. Finally, when he realizes how late it is, he has to run all the way back. When he arrives at the starting point, he collapses and dies. The other peasants bury him and we learn that six feet is all the land a man needs. WHERE DOES IT ALL END? And so it is with money. Judge Judy is not alone in her need or greed for more. Almost all of our politicians are the same. And we hear the same reasons and excuses over and over for why they should earn more. Our school superintendent should get a raise because the superintendent in Albany is making more. Our county supervisors should get paid more because county supervisors in Vermont make more. Our police should get paid more because the police in Uzbekistan make more. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam. There is never any mention of how much the average taxpayer, the person who has to pay for these raises, makes. Even if you disagree with me, and believe that judges need a raise, is now the right time? We stand on the brink of an economic recession, bigger than anything we have seen in years, and still our leaders come to the public trough, grunting for more. REALITY CHECK Before filing her lawsuit, I would recommend that Judge Judy (and other judges and politicians who feel they don’t earn enough) step out of her marble palace in Albany and head 30 miles west to Amsterdam. Then she should travel the entire length of what I call the Route 30 Poverty Corridor, which runs from the Canadian border to the Pennsylvania border. She should stop every so often, look around, look at the housing, talk to people, then go home and contemplate whether or not these people can afford to pay for her raise. If that doesn’t change her mind, then I would suggest that Judge Judy, and any other judges and state leaders who are not happy with their current salaries, resign and go into private practice and make those millions of dollars that we are always being told that they could make if they were in the private sector.
Maybe the judges want a raise because they're doing the job of Congress and/or the state Senate / Assembly?
Maybe their job would be better set in the current pay scale if they would stick to just doing their job and not mandating what the lawmaking bodies should be doing when it's their time to get to work.
What is justice worth? State’s judges deserve pay raises for vital services they render BY BARBARA N. DOLAN For The Sunday Gazette
As the wife of an elected county court judge and appointed acting supreme court justice, I feel compelled to write in response to the issue of raises for state judges. My husband is responsible for dealing with not only the most serious felony charges, including rape, robbery and murder, but also the full range of civil cases, from matrimonial to medical malpractice to land use and contracts. He prepared for this responsibility by obtaining a first-rate education. He then spent 25 years as a trial attorney, including five years as an Army JAG officer (one of those years was spent in Vietnam) and 20 years as a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office. He has been a public servant for his entire professional life — and proud of it! He could have, and still could, make a lot of money in private practice, but he loves the job he does now and, based upon everything I have heard, the people love the good service he has given them. OUTRAGEOUS IDEA An April 6 Viewpoint article (“Where’s the judicial restraint?” by Daniel T. Weaver) suggested the state’s chief judge — and judges like my husband — are greedy or “shameful” for wanting to be appropriately compensated for the difficult work they do on behalf of the people. No one expects to become wealthy in public service, but to suggest that the judges should remain the only “employees” in New York not to receive even a cost-of-living increase, much less a raise, in 10 years is outrageous. Are you paid what you were paid 10 years ago, to the penny? I doubt it. Do you know a single teacher, bus driver, clerk or garbage man who is paid the same in 2008 as they were in 1999? I don’t think so! And Weaver suggests that judges send their kids to Ivy League schools while New Yorkers less “fortunate” send theirs to a state college? Both of our daughters went to a local college, one of them spending two years at a community college before that. Both lived at home because we couldn’t afford to send them to fancy schools or even have them board at a small private college. While this is supposed to be a tough budget year in Albany, the new budget going through is almost 5 percent larger than last year’s. Unbelievably, it includes $94 million in new money for parks and $200 million in pork barrel spending! So please spare us the tight budget and talk of recession to justify balancing the budget on the backs of the judges and their families. (By the way, what recession? Unemployment is still at 5.1 percent — almost an historical low — and not a single quarter has gone by in the red. More media nonsense!) There have been several years over the last 10 years when there was ample money available in the budget and, at times, even appropriated for judges. Those monies, however, were held hostage by a dysfunctional Legislature and a horse-trading governor, all of whom seem to have forgotten what good government should be. This isn’t the way to treat the third, and coequal, branch of government. It’s a travesty and a violation of the separation of powers doctrine. JUDGES UNDERPAID The bottom line is, as virtually every editorial writer in New York has opined, as Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts (whose federal trial judges are paid $169,000 a year and are on their way to $220,000 a year) has indicated, judges are woefully underpaid for the job they do and the responsibilities they have. If you are content to have second-class judges, then continue to pay second-class professional wages. If you are content to have a situation in which a first-year attorney in a large law firm is paid more than the chief judge of New York, then continue on the present course. If so, I hope your son, daughter or someone else close doesn’t need to seek refuge in our courts for the justice they deserve as citizens in a state that relies on second-class justice from a second-class judge. Mr. Weaver, we are all entitled to our opinions. On this subject, you are misinformed and ignorant of the facts. Your column, and your gratuitous attack on the chief judge and on our hard-working judges, was a disgrace.
Perhaps they should quit and get a job in the private sector.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
they are worried that the pool guy will have to be let go......just kidding....but what that one family makes on 1 persons salary the rest of us have to have 2 people working and still come up short.....and that is fine...give them a little and maybe we will get alot.....who knows......at least he is always employable with the schooling behind him.....
In NYS the appellate court is the highest court in the state.....no other state is set up like that(as far as I could see when researching)......so, really they dont need to get paid that much unless they are on the appellate court because in NYS we like obfuscation and compensation rather than truth and justice.......just my view......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Re April 27 Viewpoint by Barbara N. Dolan, “What is justice worth?”: I guess I really have to be in sympathy for her and her husband — after all, it must be tough to get by on a mere $150,000-$200,000 a year — with no raise in pay since 1998 or ’99. Gee whiz, that’s really tough. I should have some idea, since I retired from Verizon in ’92 with a pension that hasn’t been increased since, and possibly never will. But then I can collect on my Social Security, which I contributed to for over 45 years, bringing my total yearly income to a whopping $18,000 a year! Try living on that, lady. If she and her husband can’t make it on their income, quit and go into private practice; I’m sure someone else would like a crack at her hubby’s income and is well-qualified also. Or maybe they should try to live like so many of us poor “slobs” in this work. DOUGLAS KIPP Sprakers
Re April 27 Viewpoint by Barbara Dolan, “What is justice worth?”: I’ve been driving a truck for almost 24 years. I haven’t seen better money in almost 15 years, nor do I have anybody paying me for my retirement or health care. But I have come to some conclusion about the state of our economy: Half the problem with New York state and our Legislature is that it’s full of lawyers and judges, who were once lawyers themselves . They make laws to protect their own, and to make as much money from unfortunate circumstances as they can. They illegally take unfair fees from a noncustodial parent’s paycheck each week, and some judges take unwitting parents’ children from them when they miss a school day. To talk about sending your kids to a local college as bad or unjust, just think of those hard-working people in New York and others parts of the country, just trying to put food on the table, gas in their cars, clothes on their kids’ back — and yes, even pay rent on time. So, please, spare us the tight budget you and your husband judge live on. Maybe you should stop taking advantage of those who pay your husband’s retirement, health and six-figure salary, and try living on $50,000 or less a year. And then, when he’s protecting the corporate world, along with those lawyers whom they make very rich, maybe you will see you don’t have it that bad. MATTHEW P. RICH Schenectady
CAPITOL Last Law Day sad for chief judge BY MICHAEL VIRTANEN The Associated Press
New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye needed a moment to compose herself after Friday’s Law Day ceremony outside the Court of Appeals, her last after 15 years as the state’s top judge. She was moved by the finality of the day, by court attendant Michelle Perry-Belches’ powerful rendition of “America the Beautiful,” and by the thought that, in her final months, Kaye has had to sue the state Legislature for failing to raise judges’ pay for a decade. “It’s just one of the additional reasons I’m so heartbroken we have to come to this juncture,” Kaye said. “It was totally avoidable and unnecessary and remains so. It should be worked out.” Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, whose father named Kaye chief judge 15 years ago, had sharper words. “It is the collision of unfortunate and connected phenomena: The dysfunction of Albany meets the degradation of public service,” he told about 200 judges, lawyers and others gathered outside the courthouse. “I recused myself from the current pay raise litigation because my office represents every party in the case on other matters,” said Cuomo, which left lawmakers seeking private counsel. “But as a citizen I believe the Legislature must act immediately to pay our judges a salary commensurate with the awesome responsibility they bear.” Kaye filed suit last month after the Legislature for the 10th straight year didn’t authorize raises for the 1,250 state-level judges. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has blamed the Assembly for stalling the raises, saying the Senate approved pay hikes. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has declined to comment. Judges’ raises had been attached to politically sensitive raises for lawmakers and neither have been approved. Pay ranges from $108,800 for full-time city court judges to Kaye’s $156,000. The judges have proposed raising the benchmark salary for state Supreme Court justices from $136,700 to the current level of federal trial judges at $169,300, and others proportionately. Meanwhile some judges are recusing themselves from cases brought by state legislators and their law firms, citing a conflict of interest. Kaye, who after turning 70 will retire at the end of the year, in an email Thursday cautioned them not to refuse to hear lawmakers’ cases as a form of protest. She wrote that “using recusal as a strategy rather than as a matter of individual conscience” would be perceived as retaliatory and weaken their cause. “It’s just a very sad thing when you have to sue partners in government,” Kaye said following her speech in support of the rule of law. She didn’t think many judges were refusing cases, noted recusal “is and always has been a very individual matter — meaning that when a judge feels he or she cannot be unbiased, that there is some feeling for one party or another, then the judge steps off the case.” She also rejected one judge’s suggestion that she advise them all to do it. In her e-mail, Kaye noted that Gov. David Paterson this week acknowledged the judges should get raises but advised against any work slowdown as protest — “an allegation we assured him is without merit.”
Court employees get pay raises ALBANY — About 6,000 state court employees are in line for cost-of-living pay raises over four years under a tentative contract agreement. The Civil Service Employees Association says its accord with the state Office of Court Administration will be retroactive to April 1, 2007, with annual pay raises of 3 percent in each of the first three years and 4 percent the fourth year. The union agreed to salary increase deferrals for employees earning more than $115,000 annually until a judicial pay raise is enacted. The 1,250 state-level judges have not had a raise for a decade and have sued legislators, challenging their failure to authorize raises as effectively a pay cut.
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