State commission begins to consider raises for judges
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New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial and Executive Compensation met for the first time on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023. Screenshot via New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial and Executive Compensation/YouTube
By Jacob Kaye
Judges in New York State soon could see their first pay increase in eight years, or see their salary remain at the same level it’s been at since 2015 depending on the upcoming work of the commission tasked with determining the salaries for lawmakers, the governor, state agency heads and judges in the Empire State.
The latest iteration of the New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial and Executive Compensation met for the first time on Monday to begin the work of determining whether or not judges in New York should see their salaries adjusted.
Monday’s meeting, which was held at the New York City Bar Association’s Manhattan headquarters, was mostly one concerned with logistics. However, the meeting of the commission marks the beginning of a two-year process involving numerous public hearings and hours of deliberation to determine the salaries of some of the most powerful people in the state.
“Our challenge, I think, is steep,” said Eugene Fahey, the chair of the commission and a former associate judge on the state’s Court of Appeals, at the start of Monday’s meeting.
Fahey, who was appointed chair of the commission by Chief Judge Rowan Wilson, will lead the group, which also includes Helene Blank, a litigator appointed by Rowan to the commission; Theresa Egan, a former attorney who has worked in various capacities with New York State’s government; Nadine Fontaine, the general counsel for the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York; Victor Kovner, the senior counsel to the firm of Davis Wright Tremaine; Robert Megna, the president of the Rockefeller Institute of Government at SUNY and the former state budget director; and Jeremy Weinstein, a former Queens state senator and former administrative judge of both Queens’ Criminal and Civil Supreme Courts.
The commission will first consider pay raises for judges and next year begin to consider pay raises for lawmakers and the state’s executive branch.
Created in 2011, the seven-member commission was put in place at a time when judges had not seen a raise in a dozen years while seeing federal judges have their pay steadily increased.
It wasn’t until 2015 that the commission – which meets every four years – convened and recommended incremental salary increases for the judges.
By 2019, state Supreme Court justices were paid the same salary as U.S. District Court judges, at $210,900 a year.
But after the commission met in 2018 and again in 2020 – as per an order from then-Governor Andrew Cuomo – judges’ salaries have remained stagnant, and pay parity with federal judges has again become an issue.
Federal judges now earn 10 percent more than the state’s Supreme Court justices.
Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration, said that the leadership of the New York State Unified Court System will urge the commission to increase the salaries of judges in the upcoming months.
“We will be making the strongest possible case to the Commission not just for judicial pay raises but also for a return to elected state Supreme Court judges pay parity with federal District Court judges — as called for by both the 2011 and 2015 commissions,” Chalfen said.
The New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial and Executive Compensation will decide in the coming months whether or not they believe state Supreme Court justices should be paid equal to federal judges, a recommendation they have made in the past. Eagle file photo by Walter Karling
The work of the commission has, at times, been controversial, and has riled leaders in the state’s court system.
In 2019, the commission recommended against increasing judicial salaries, citing a budget shortfall the state was facing at the time.
The decision was condemned by then-Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks.
"The decision threatens a return to the dysfunctional and demoralizing periods when New York’s judges were denied cost of living adjustments for long, multi-year stretches," Marks said in 2019, according to reporting by the Democrat and Chronicle.
Marks lobbied Cuomo to and the legislature to pass a bill authorizing the commission to again consider judicial pay less than a year after their last recommendation, and in April of 2020 they did just that.
However, the ensuing year and the pandemic that defined it brought with it a poor financial outlook that the commission said would make judicial raises untenable – that same year, Marks attempted to cut the court system’s judiciary budget by 10 percent by terminating 46 judges over the 70 who, at the time, were applying for recertification.
“Since the issuance of the 2019 Report New York’s financial condition has substantially deteriorated, due to the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, to a far greater degree than any commissioner could have predicted,” the commission wrote in their recommendation issued in November 2020.
“Granting raises to public servants, no matter how much they might otherwise deserve them, is simply not possible at this time,” the commission added.
Separate from the commission, the legislature passed in 2022 a bill – that was later signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul – to increase their own pay by $32,000, making them the highest paid state lawmakers in the country.
On Monday, Fahey said that he would be looking back at the work at past commissions for a better understanding of how the current commission should proceed.
“The prior commissions, I think ,are a good place for us to begin as commissioners in our research as to where we should go and how we can make a positive decision that's best for New York State government and the people of the state,” he said.
Studying past commissions could also help the current one avoid some common pitfalls, Fahey added.
“The commission's deliberations on prior occasions, I think, represents some of the difficulties in coming to a decision on this issue,” Fahey said. “This issue is always a difficult “small-p political” decision and our goal is to provide at least an objective analysis of how we feel the decision should be made.”
Despite the potential for disappointment, judicial leaders said they were optimistic on Monday following the first meeting of the commission.
“The Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York is pleased the Quadrennial Salary Commission has begun its work,” Judge Mary M. Farley, the president of the Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, said in a statement to the Eagle.
“In 2019 and 2020, the commission denied any pay increase recommendation for members of the judiciary, last supporting a salary increase eight, long years ago,” Farley added. “We are eager to present testimony supportive of our request, consistent with recognized economic, financial, and labor market forces which have proved persuasive for New York’s union-represented labor and the legislature.”
However, much like 2020, the state’s financial outlook could again mean a salary freeze for judges, Fahey suggested on Monday.
Citing reduced tax revenue and the ongoing costs associated with the asylum seeker crisis, Governor Kathy Hochul ordered commissioners of the state’s various agencies and departments to halt spending increases for the following fiscal year.
Fahey said on Monday that the commission should ask officials with the state and with the Unified Court System about whether or not they expect the spending freeze to effect a potential pay increase for judges.
Judicial salaries vary depending on the judicial position but can vary from $240,000 for the chief judge of the Court of Appeals to $189,000 for city court judges outside of New York City, according to OCA.
An elected state Supreme Court justice receives an annual salary of $210,900. Administrative judges receive $218,500 per year.
The commission will hold its first public hearing on judicial pay on Friday, Oct. 13.
