Raises for judges are overdue

The state's judges may be about to get their first pay raise in 13 years. The Special Commission on Judicial Compensation recently recommended increasing the annual salary of a State Supreme Court justice from $136,700 to $174,000 by 2014. It's about time.

All that's required for the first phase of the 27 percent increase to go into effect April 1 is for the State Legislature to do nothing. That should be easy, since legislative inaction is the reason judges' pay hasn't budged since 1999.

Back then gasoline cost $1.25 a gallon on Long Island. The median price for a home was $210,000 in Nassau and $162,000 in Suffolk. Now a gallon of gas costs $3.96, and the median home price is $415,000 in Nassau and $315,000 in Suffolk. Clearly judges' purchasing power has taken a powerful beating over the dozen years of zeros.

This is a tough time for the state to hike anybody's pay. The economy has flatlined and austerity is essential. Still, the recommended raises strike the right balance between what's fair for the state's 1,200 judges and what's affordable.

The bump in pay is significant, but it's still short of the roughly $195,000 a year they would have been making by 2014 had they received annual cost-of-living adjustments all along. And the increase is set to be phased in over three years, going to $160,000 this April, and not reaching parity with U.S. District Court judges at $174,000 until 2014.

It's a fair salary. Although lawyers at major firms make much more, the raise should make it easier to attract and retain top-notch jurists. hN