By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
Even in the face of a $155 million shortfall, Kentucky’s Chief Justice is asking state lawmakers to provide judges with a 10 percent raise over the next two years to bring salaries closer to the national average.
Kentucky Chief Justice John D. Minton told lawmakers salaries for judges in Kentucky rank 48th out of 50 states.
Minton’s comments came at his annual State of the Judiciary speech given to lawmakers on the Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary. Minton said the judicial branch has many other challenges to face.
Judge Minton
Judges have received only one percent raises in two years and $400 raises in two other years, Minton said. The low national ranking “has left our judges feeling discouraged and undervalued,” he said. “It also provides little incentives for the best and brightest attorneys to leave lucrative law practices.”
Minton is proposing an annual five percent pay raise for the next biennium, which would bring Kentucky up to number 39.
The escalating drug epidemic in Kentucky has crippled the judicial system too, he said.
The court system “has become ground zero for the resulting criminal and civil cases, including an explosion in Family Court,“ Minton told the committee. “Dependency, neglect and abuse cases fill our dockets as daily reminders of the grim toll the epidemic is taking on Kentucky families and children.”
He said he is working with his counterparts throughout the region and the nation to establish best practices and provide a more unified response.
“We’re grappling to keep up with rapid technological and social developments,” he told lawmakers. “The opioid epidemic has expanded court caseloads and altered Drug Court treatment in ways we couldn’t have imagined, even a few years ago. And like many other state courts, juvenile justice reform and pretrial justice reform are among our top priorities.”
Minton said pretrial reform includes changes to bail systems.
“There’s a growing call for reform against financial bail, which can penalize the poor,” he said. “Increased litigation challenging money bail, and the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act, co-sponsored by U.S. Senators Kamala Harris and Rand Paul of Kentucky speak to this national, bipartisan movement.”
He noted Kentucky was a leader in pretrial justice reform. “In 1976, Kentucky was one of the first states to abolish bail bonding for profit [bail bondsmen], and our leadership continues today.”
Minton said the Administrative Office of the Courts is working with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, along with the Department of Juvenile Justice, in launching a financial incentive fund as part of legislation passed by the General Assembly a few years ago.
“Savings realized from juvenile justice reform will be reinvested into an incentive fund for programs that supervise low-risk youth,” he said. “The money we would have spent to detain juveniles, will instead be used to provide resources and treatment services to young people across the state.”
He said the judiciary is helping improve Kentucky’s adoption process, in response to a call by Gov. Matt Bevin.
“I created a Dependency, Neglect and Abuse Judicial Workgroup, to identify policies to reduce the adoption timeline, and address inefficient policies and redundant paperwork.” Minton said they will provide recommendations to the bipartisan House Working Group on Adoption, which hopes to draft legislation for the 2018 General Assembly.
Minton said another challenge is court technology even though it has made huge gains since he became chief justice in 2008 when Kentucky was operating as a paper court system. “Even though we are still a belts-and-suspenders organization, we are making strides.”
Electronic document filing is now available in all 120 Kentucky counties, and Minton said a pilot program in Trimble County will be the basis for a new, statewide case management system. He next hopes to expand the program to Daviess and Fayette counties next.
He told lawmakers a new jury management system took effect Oct. 1.
The new rules call for centralized mailing of jury summonses, which means instead of individual courts handling this across the state, will save time and money by processing them at the AOC, he said.
They are currently working on a system to send texts and emails to prospective jurors, said Minton, as one way to cut down the number of those who don’t report.
He also wants to increase juror’s pay from its current $12.50 per day.
Minton said changes to the judicial retirement system proposed by Bevin and Republican legislative leaders is “going to complicate and make more difficult our ability to attract people to the bench.”
He wouldn’t comment specifically on reaction to what he’s heard from members of the judiciary, or whether it should be rolled into the Kentucky Retirement System, since any legal challenge to pension reforms enacted by lawmakers could come before the Supreme Court.
However, he did give some understanding to the problem lawmakers face with pension reform. “I recognize the governor and legislature – all of us as Kentuckians – are confronted with a significant problem, and I wouldn’t expect the judicial system to be exempt from it.”
Minton said the existing pension system for judges was “adequately funded and we felt the system, as it existed, was fair and there was no need to make a change.”
