Lawmakers are taking the first step toward giving Georgia’s judges a big pay raise, while also seeking to reduce gaping pay disparities between superior court judges in different parts of the state.
The state House voted 154-13 on Thursday to pass House Bill 947, which would put into law guidelines for raising and standardizing pay. The bilel goes on to the Senate for more debate, and lawmakers would have to later budget the money for the increases.
The state would have to spend $21 million next year for all the increases, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, a Dublin Republican, recently told The Associated Press that he anticipates any increases would be phased in over multiple years.
Judges have been pushing for the changes, saying that pay hasn’t kept pace with what lawyers can make in private practice, leading some qualified lawyers to step down from the bench or never seek to become judges in the first place.
State Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Boggs, in his Feb. 7 State of the Judiciary address to lawmakers said it’s “critical that the state compensate the state’s judges sufficiently to attract good ones and keep them.”
The plan would link top pay for judges to what federal judges in Atlanta make. State Supreme Court justices could see their pay rise from $186,000 to more than $223,000, while Court of Appeals judges could see their pay rise from $185,000 now to $212,000.
The picture is more complicated for superior court judges, who hear cases across Georgia’s 50 judicial circuits. The state now contributes $142,000 a year toward their salaries, but counties give local supplements, with urban counties typically paying more. That means that in Augusta, Columbia County or DeKalb County, superior court judges now make almost $222,000 a year, substantially more than state Supreme Court justices, while in two rural multi-county circuits in eastern and southwestern Georgia, judges make…
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