Texas state judges seeking their first pay increase from the Texas Legislature in more than a dozen years are worried this weekend that the lawmaker’s response will be too close to those infamous words shared by Agent 86 Maxwell Smart:
“You missed it by that much.”
New Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock sent a last-minute email on Saturday to members of the state house and senate with the subject line “Urgent Memo”, begging them to hike the compensation of judges, which currently ranks 49th in the U.S. — only West Virginia pays its judges less.
In the two-page memo, Chief Justice Blacklock tells members of the 89th Texas Legislature that the low amount the state pays its judges is “an embarrassment that is making it harder and harder to attract and retain qualified, hardworking judges capable of delivering a high quality of justice to Texas families and businesses.”
Bipartisan leaders in the Texas Senate approved a 15 percent compensation increase for judges, but then the lower chamber passed a bill that would raise judicial pay by 25 percent. Both bills placed additional reporting requirements on judges to provide the number of hours they work in the office and outside the office.
But Bloomberg Law reported Saturday that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has blocked the bill from getting a final vote because the Texas House version does not also increase the pensions of lawmakers, which has been traditionally tied to judicial compensation.
“As the session draws to a close, the fate of legislation raising judicial pay has been clouded by the longstanding linkage in Texas law between judicial pay and legislator pensions,” Chief Justice Blacklock wrote in the memo. “At this critical juncture, if either legislative chamber insists on its favored solution to the legislator-pension question, I fear we will end the session without any increase in judicial pay. If that happens, it is not the judges themselves but our Texas justice system — which should be the envy of the world — that will suffer most, along with the thousands of Texans who seek justice in our courts every day.”
Texas Lawbook research shows that judges in the state are paid significantly less than the lawyers who appear before them daily.
Texas district court judges, who hear the great percentage of criminal cases and civil disputes, are paid about $155,400 and state supreme court justices take home between $168,000 and $211,000.
By comparison, first-year lawyers just out of law school are paid more than $230,000 from the corporate firms that hire them. Senior associates take home more than triple the pay of Texas judges. And top partners at law firms take home between $2.5 million and $13 million annually, according to Texas Lawbook data.
But Chief Justice Blacklock said he and his colleagues “remain confident in your ability to work together in the waning hours of this session to strengthen and support our courts — for Texas, and not for ourselves.”