'Not That Time Yet'
Chief Judge Refrains From Pay Suit Role
By REUVEN BLAU

While the state's Chief Judge, Judith S. Kaye, has repeatedly decried the low pay for judges, she has declined to back a lawsuit recently filed by four jurists charging that the lack of an increase in compensation since 1999 is a violation of their constitutional rights.

JUDITH S. KAYE: Resolution still possible.

Judge Kaye has remained silent on the lawsuit filed Sept. 12 in State Supreme Court in Manhattan against Governor Spitzer because she believes the matter will be resolved shortly by the State Legislature.

'Not Last-Resort Time'

"Judge Kaye has always said that a lawsuit would be a last resort, and she doesn't believe we've reached that time yet," said David Bookstaver, the chief spokesman for the Office of Court Administration.

In June, Ms. Kaye said that OCA was "preparing full-scale litigation" against the state if the Legislature failed to increase judicial pay. "That would be a dark day in state history," she told a group of business leaders.

Some court observers predicted that the legal action against the state would be filed in Federal District Court, as any State Supreme Court Justice would also be directly affected by the ongoing salary disagreement and as a result could be forced to recuse him or herself from the case.

GOVERNOR SPITZER: Conditional support.

"It's called the Rule of Necessity," Mr. Bookstaver explained. "Cases are decided on the law, not on emotion."

The jurists' complaint contends that under the State Constitution, a judge's compensation "shall not be diminished during the term of office." The suit asserts that inflation has had the effect of diminishing the unchanged salaries.

Rang Lawmakers' Bell

Regardless of the suit's legal merits, one court observer said last week that the complaint may have actually inflamed the situation. "The only thing the lawsuit might have done is pissed off the Legislature," the source said.

The judicial pay issue may be headed towards a resolution at last, as one Albany insider last week said that the Legislature has been making headway on Governor Spitzer's plan to revamp state campaign finance laws - legislation he has prioritized as a condition for increasing lawmakers' salaries, which would break the deadlock on judicial pay.

JOSEPH L. BRUNO: Score to settle?

"They are now expected back Oct. 22," the source said, referring to the Legislature. "There's a lot of progress on this."

But some insiders were skeptical, noting that the State Senate Investigations Committee appears driven to complete its Troopergate probe into questionable use of State Police by top aides to Mr. Spitzer in an attempt to expose Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno's extensive use of state helicopters before the upper house deals with legislative issues.

Other Hurdles

The Governor's proposed campaign finance reforms must also overcome several other major hurdles, as they are being opposed by Mr. Bruno as well as some of the state's largest public-employee unions.

"They were supposed to come back in September," one insider said. "It doesn't appear that they want to come back with the hearings on the Troopergate. Bruno can change his mind next week and call them back. The Assembly is ready to come back anytime."

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, however, last week told reporters that his chamber would return only "when we have agreements on important issues with the Senate."

The Governor and Senator Bruno have feuded bitterly virtually throughout Mr. Spitzer's nine months in office. Their tenuous relationship completely fractured in July after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo issued a report which found that the Governor's top aides had misused the State Police in their attempt to embarrass Mr. Bruno, the top Republican state official.

In reaction, the State Senate's Investigations Committee launched a probe into the matter, arguing that it wasn't fully investigated by the AG's Office, which doesn't have subpoena power.

DA Cleared Spitzer

The Albany County District Attorney's Office recently concluded that there was no wrongdoing by the Governor's staff in the incident. The State Senate, however, has vowed to continue its investigation, noting that DA David Soares did not use his subpoena power to interview Mr. Spitzer's aides under oath.

The ongoing dispute has created a stalemate on practically all legislative issues, including judicial raises. The state's 1,300 judges have not received a pay hike or a cost-of-living adjustment in eight years. Ms. Kaye has been lobbying the State Legislature for the past several years to boost salaries for local judges.

U.S. District Court Judges are paid $165,200. Judges in the state earn a maximum of $136,700.

The Governor's proposed budget announced in January included a $111-million plan to give state judges an average salary increase of 25-percent retroactive to April 1, 2005.

State Supreme Court Justices would have received $168,000 and Family Court, County Court and Surrogate's Court Judges would have gotten 95 percent of that salary. Similarly, New York City Civil and Criminal Court Judges and Long Island District Court Judges would have received 93 percent of that amount as their salary.

But that proposal did not survive final budget negotiations with the Legislature and was once again stalled by Albany politics. Traditionally, judges' salary hikes have been tied with pay boosts for members of the Legislature and high-level officials of the executive branch of government.

Ms. Kaye has proposed a plan structured to avoid the same political problems that torpedoed raises for state judges over the past several years, and is designed to place judicial pay on par with that of U.S. District Judges.

Court Union Talks Stall

Under that plan, a bipartisan panel would convene after each gubernatorial election to set salaries for the next four years for all three branches of government. The proposed Quadrennial Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Compensation would be composed of 13 unpaid appointees, mainly from outside government.

To determine appropriate raises, the panel would examine cost-of-living increases, pay hikes given to similar Federal positions, recent local union wage contracts, and private-sector salaries. The commission's proposed pay boosts would take effect immediately, but the Governor would have the ability to modify or reject the recommended increases.

The stalemate over judicial raises has also stalled contract negotiations with the unions representing state court workers, according to those labor organizations. OCA, however, has denied that the two issues were connected.

According to several sources, the court unions have begun lobbying state legislators behind the scenes on behalf of the judges in an attempt to break the logjam.

The negotiations are not at a complete standstill, though. A coalition of nine city-based unions representing court employees had its first meeting with state negotiators on Sept. 27, according to Dennis W. Quirk, the president of the Court Officers' Association, who is heading the group.

"We are prepared to begin negotiating with the state," he said during a Sept. 25 phone interview. "We are not making any concessions and taking any zeros. We expect to get financial percentage rates similar to what the city firefighters just got."

The Uniformed Firefighters Association negotiated two annual 4-percent raises earlier this year.