The Arkansas Supreme Court building in Little Rock.
LITTLE ROCK – Two members of the Arkansas Supreme Court on Monday urged a panel reviewing salaries for elected officials to give justices a bigger pay raise than initially recommended, saying the change is needed to ensure top candidates run for the state’s highest court.
Justices Jo Hart and Karen Baker called for the higher pay raises as the seven-member Independent Citizens Commission held a public hearing on its plan to more than double legislators’ salaries and grant substantial hikes to other officials.
The panel, formed by a constitutional amendment voters approved in November, is expected to vote on its pay raise recommendations March 16. The commission has called for raising Supreme Court justices’ salaries from $149,589 a year to $166,500, with the chief justice’s pay set to rise from $161,601 to $180,000.
“We want to draw members from the bar who are successful lawyers who right now are making a lot more money,” Hart told the commission. “We’re only going to do that if we compensate them for their time and efforts.”
Hart and Baker both noted that unlike the state Appeals Court, Supreme Court justices don’t receive mileage reimbursements. The panel has called for increasing appeals judges’ pay from $144,982 a year to $161,500. Baker proposed raising state Supreme Court justices’ salaries to $180,000 and the chief justice’s to $182,500.
Only five people spoke about the pay plan at Monday’s hearing, despite the commission receiving dozens of emails that mostly opposed the salary increases for state officials. Much of the criticism has focused on the plan to raise House and Senate members’ salaries from $15,869 a year to $39,400. Salaries for the House speaker and Senate president would increase from $17,771 to $45,000 under the plan.
The commission called for the 148 percent pay raise after legislative leaders agreed to eliminate the up to $14,400 in reimbursements that lawmakers can receive for office expenses.
“We’ve got so many issues that this money needs to go to, and the first thing you do is double the pay rate of people, some of them making hundreds of thousands a year,” Rick Wells of Little Rock told the panel.
Scott Trotter, a Little Rock attorney, praised the commission for its work and said he believed the legislative pay raises were fair because of inflation and an amendment voters approved in 2008 requiring the Legislature to meet annually.
“I think you’ve done a good thorough job and you’ve considered a lot of useful factors in reaching your decision,” Trotter said.
The commission was created to review and adjust salaries for legislators, constitutional officers and judges. The panel was set up through a constitutional amendment that eased term limits for lawmakers and imposed new ethics rules on elected officials. The salaries had previously been set in the state constitution, which allowed the Legislature to make cost-of-living adjustments.
(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten, broadcast or distributed.)
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