Idaho Senate OKs judicial pay

BOISE — Idaho’s judges will likely receive a raise this year, but the courts oppose the method the Legislature will use to do so.

Sen. Abby Lee, R-Fruitland, presented on Tuesday HB 746, which provides a roughly 3% increase for judges but also creates a new policy that would provide a $25,000 incentive to judges who provide a year’s notice of their retirement and who serve the remainder of their term.

Lee acknowledged the Senate previously passed a “clean bill” that just would have provided the raises, but that didn’t go anywhere in the House.

She said the retirement bonus and announcement incentive is meant to encourage more people to run in judicial elections. She said the bill is meant to provide an incentive rather than a punitive approach.

“Primarily, it lets us get to an open election.... It also, I think, gives us another opportunity to signal that that position is going to be open and to have good people in our community either apply for a magistrate position or want to run for the open open district, appellate, or supreme court justices,” Lee said.

The judges are the only state employees with their salary set in code, which means a bill has to pass each year to provide a raise, while other employees typically receive a change in compensation as part of a statewide budget decision that gets included in all the agency budget bills.

Jason Spillman, an attorney for the courts, said that courts are in favor of raising judicial salaries and are not opposed to the retirement bonus, but had issues with the way the bill combines the issues.

“The important piece of this that I would like to talk about today, is the fact that this is the third time in three years that Idaho’s judges find their compensation increase saddled to a separate policy issue in a single bill,” Spillman said. “Combining the pay increase with a separate issue, it doesn’t happen to any other state employee or state officials … for that reason, the court objects to the approach of combining two separate issues in the single bill.”

He said the courts did not believe the bonus would have much of an impact on the courts, but “acknowledged that’s a policy call” for the Legislature to make.

Another bill that had been introduced in the House would have required vacancies that were created by judges retiring before the end of their term to stay open until the next election, and using senior judges to cover until the next election. Senior judges are retired but work part time on the bench. The courts had concerns about this bill, Supreme Court Justice Richard Bevan told Idaho Reports.

Senate Judiciary and Rules Chairman Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, said the policy change in the bill is still tied to compensation.

“We’ve tried to play just the straight game here,” Lakey said, “but we have two sides of the rotunda to deal with.”

Lee pointed out that Spillman had presented a bill that also tied a policy change to compensation, which would have significantly increased judicial salaries over a period of time as well as created a Committee on Judicial Compensation.

Bevan has consistently said that judicial compensation is an issue because not enough people are applying to fill vacant positions or filing to run in elections.

Lee said at this late point in the session, she thought HB 746 “is the best we can do.”

The Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee voted to approve the bill and send it to the floor for a vote.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on X @EyeOnBoiseGuido.