Georgia House takes a step toward boosting pay for the state’s judges

ATLANTA (AP) — Lawmakers are taking the first step toward giving Georgia’s judges a big pay raise, while also seeking to reduce gaping pay disparities between superior court judges in different parts of the state.

The state House voted 154-13 on Thursday to pass House Bill 947, which would put into law guidelines for raising and standardizing pay. The bill goes on to the Senate for more debate, and lawmakers would have to later budget the money for the increases.

The state would have to spend $21 million next year for all the increases, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, a Dublin Republican, recently told The Associated Press that he anticipates any increases would be phased in over multiple years.

Judges have been pushing for the changes, saying that pay hasn’t kept pace with what lawyers can make in private practice, leading some qualified lawyers to step down from the bench or never seek to become judges in the first place.

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State Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Boggs, in his Feb. 7 State of the Judiciary address to lawmakers said it’s “critical that the state compensate the state’s judges sufficiently to attract good ones and keep them.”

The plan would link top pay for judges to what federal judges in Atlanta make. State Supreme Court justices could see their pay rise from $186,000 to more than $223,000, while Court of Appeals judges could see their pay rise from $185,000 now to $212,000.

The picture is more complicated for superior court judges, who hear cases across Georgia’s 50 judicial circuits. The state now contributes $142,000 a year toward their salaries, but counties give local supplements, with urban counties typically paying more. That means that in Augusta, Columbia County or DeKalb County, superior court judges now make almost $222,000 a year, substantially more than state Supreme Court justices, while in two rural multi-county circuits in eastern and southwestern Georgia, judges make less than $154,000 a year.

A survey last year by the state Judicial Council found 81% of superior court judges thought the current system was unfair and 81% thought the current system made it hard to get qualified lawyers to become judges.

State Rep. Rob Leverett, the Elberton Republican sponsoring the bill, told House members that the ability of superior court judges to earn more than Supreme Court justices means pay is “upside down.” And he said there’s no reason for such a wide disparity in superior court judge pay, since the state tries to make sure each judge hears a roughly equal number of cases.

“To put it plainly, there’s no reason that a judge out in a rural area should make so much less than a judge in an urban area,” Leverett said.

Under the proposed system, the state would pay superior court judge as much as $201,000, while counties could add a 10% locality supplement, bringing total pay to $221,000.

Sitting judges would be allowed to keep their current pay if it was higher. The Georgia Constitution doesn’t allow the pay of sitting judges to be decreased during their current term of office. New judges would be required to be paid under the new system.

Complicating adoption is that other judges, district attorneys and public defenders have their pay tied to superior court judges. Under Leverett’s plans, there would be a one-year pause before the pay of affected state court judges and juvenile court judges would rise. During that time, a county could ask its local lawmakers to amend pay of the other judges if it didn’t want to pay them more. Pay for other officials wouldn’t rise until a county acted.