The Senior Status Judge’s bill, which imposes restrictions on the admission of judges to the program, provides for the sharing of financial information about the program, and which would extend the expiration of the program from Jan. 31, 2009 to Dec. 2012, is dying a slow death in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
  This program rewards retired judges who agree to work without pay for 600 days over a five year period.  The pension of the judge is enhanced while working in the program and that enhancement is continued upon successful completion of the program.
 The public benefits from the Senior Status Judge’s program by obtaining the services of retired judges for a fraction of the cost of creating new judgeships.
  According to AOC statistics there are currently, there are 95 circuit judges. During fiscal year 2004, the Circuit Court recorded 103,192  cases filed. The average case load per Circuit Judge is 1,086.
 There are  34 circuit family court judges. In FY 2004, the Circuit Family Court recorded 53,825 cases filed. The average case load per Family Court Judge is 1,583.

 There are 116 district judges. In fiscal year 2004, the District Court recorded 829,957 cases filed. The average case load per District Judge is 7,154. There are also 21 members of the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court handling about 2,000 cases a year.
 

The total case load of all courts was 988,874 in 2004. The actual numbers for the last twelve months can be expected to take the total number to 1,000,000 cases.
 It is interesting to note that Kentucky case loads are so large that the Kentucky courts handle cases equal to the entire population of the state every 4 years. Most of these cases require multiple hearings, so the number of times that a person comes before the court is easily close to 2 million actual hearings.
  Cases loads vary greatly, as some judges are assigned to rural districts that cover as many as four counties and involve a lot of travel time for the judges who serve in all counties in their district. So rural judges sometimes have lower caseloads than urban judges, thereby making the workloads in the urban areas greater.
 Currently, there are some 45 judges serving as Senior Status judges who are helping to reduce the number of cases heard by the non-retired judges.
  With the heavy case loads and only 261 full time judges, the disposition of cases is slowed.  One should also consider the issue of work quality.  When a judge has 200 people in his courtroom waiting to be heard, and that is not an uncommon occurrence in many courts, the day often requires the judge to make snap decisions without the luxury of providing the attention each case deserves.
 The use of Senior Status judges has been a very cost effective program that assigns judges to courts with the heaviest case load. 
  It has been estimated that it would cost the state about $300,000 to finance a full time judgeship.  The use of Senior Status judges is estimated to cost the state about $1,500,000 a year.  If the state were to create enough new full time judgeships to equal the number of Senior Status judges currently serving, it would cost the state some $13,500,000 a year.
 So let us compare $1,500,000 for 45 Senior Judges or $13,500,000 for full time judges. It appears to us that the state is saving the taxpayer $12,000,000 a year.
 It would seem that it would be an easy call for the Legislature to continue this program.

While the House has passed this bill, the Senate is dragging its feet and has only two more days (March 26-27) to move this bill out of the Senate Appropriations Committee and to pass it.
 But of course, things are often not as simple as they might appear, and the taxpayer’s benefit is apparently of little consideration to the Senate.
 Rumors abound in Frankfort, that the reason the bill has been delayed and may die in the Senate due to “bad blood� between Senate President David Williams and Chief Justice Joseph Lambert.  The rumor goes that some years ago, the Supreme Court of Kentucky threw out a pension bill favorable to members of the legislature, and the death of the Senior Status Judges program is the payback.
 LawReader has made an inquiry to Senator Williams about his potential support or opposition to the bill, and after more than ten days we have not received a response.
  We cannot say that Senator Williams is for or against the bill. We cannot say if the ruling of Chief Justice Lambert on the legislature’s pension bill case is actually a reason for the Senior Status Judges bill being delayed.  But something has delayed this bill, and Senator Williams as President of the Senate certainly has the clout to get this bill to the floor of the Senate for an up and down vote.
 What we can say is that the Senior Status Judge’s program is a great benefit to the taxpayer and if this bill is not passed, caseloads piled on our full time judges will be greatly enlarged.
  We fear that a few powerful members of the Senate Leadership are holding this bill back and that their intent is to send a message to the courts that they should not in the future lightly throw out any law favored by the legislature regardless of the constitutionality of the law being considered by the court.
 This can only be taken as an attack on the independence of the Judiciary.  Chief Justice Lambert is the only remaining member of the Supreme Court that was sitting at the time of the rejection of the legislative pension enhancement bill.  He voted with the majority of the Court to throw that law out.  Chief Justice Lambert is not quite old enough to reach the optimum time for retirement and entry into the Senior Status Judges program before the programs sunset in 2009.
  If this bill fails to pass, the program will be terminated on Jan. 31, 2009.  The result would be that the Chief Justice would have to retire early to receive the benefits of a full retirement benefit or if he were to remain in office after Jan. 31, 2009, then he would forever forfeit a substantial pension enhancement. 
 Members of the judiciary are watching to see if Chief Justice Lambert will be pressured by the State Senate to retire early as a payback for having voted his conscience on a law he believed was unconstitutional. No judge should be pressured in this manner.
 Any member of the Senate who buys into such a payback attack on the independence of the courts are not likely to go unnoticed by members of the public who seek speedy and impartial justice, and by the taxpayers.
 There are still two more days remaining in which the Senate could pass this bill.  We hope that the leadership will prove the rumors wrong.
  

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 11:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.