When Pennsylvania judges wanted a pay raise in 2005, they conspired with Gov. Ed Rendell and legislative leaders to push through a middle-of-the-night pay raise.
The public outcry over the payjacking led to the ouster of a Supreme Court justice by voters in 2005, the retirement or ouster of 55 lawmakers in 2006 and the retirement of the chief justice in 2007 (See Pennsylvania Pay Raise Claims Another Victim).
The only person who survived the political fallout from the ill-fated pay raise vote was Gov. Ed Rendell, who was reelected to a second term.
New York judges also want a pay raise, but unlike Pennsylvania, the N.Y. judges can't get the governor and state legislature to make a back-room deal.
Instead, the state's chief justice sued Gov. David Paterson and the leaders of the Legislature to try to force them to raise judges' salaries, according to DemocratANDChronicle.com, the Web site of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle newspaper.
2 comments:
Let them go back to private practice, if they want or can make more money, you know that won't happen!
I believe 4 of 7 members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who were serving at the time of the pay raise fiasco are no longer on the court. Perhaps the N.Y. judges should learn from Pennsylvania's experience with judicial pay raises.
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