COUNCIL agrees to raises for appeals court clerks.

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Legislative Council on Friday voted to boost the spending authority for the state Court of Appeals by about $638,000 to allow the court to give its 24 law clerks’ pay raises.

The raises amount to about $506,000 in regular salaries and about $162,000 for personal services matching costs.

The clerks salaries range from $71,345 to $84,827 a year, while the pay of the Supreme Court’s 14 law clerks range from$86,250 to $101,774, state records show.

The pay raises will range between about $12,000 and about $22,000 a year, Anne Solomon, chief staff attorney for the Court of Appeals, said after the Legislative Council’s meeting.

In addition, the appeals court’s three staff attorneys and chief staff attorney will get raises because otherwise the clerks would make more than them and the four are required to have more experience, she said. The staff attorneys are paid $71,500, $74,930 and $81,920 a year, while the chief staff attorney is paid $92,023 a year, according to the Arkansas Transparency website.

The increased would be retroactive to July 1 — when the fiscal year began, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Rita Gruber wrote in a letter Tuesday to Legislative Council co-chairs Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers, and Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, R-Hermitage.

Gruber said the court requested the raises under Arkansas Code Annotated 16-12-108 (f) (1), which states, “Law Clerks to the Court of Appeals shall receive the same salaries as Supreme Court law clerks.”

Solomon told the Legislative Council “around January 2020, we realized by the Transparency website that the Supreme Court had awarded raises to its law clerks.

“That was first that we knew about it,” she said.

“So at that point, we began going forward to try to achieve parity,” Solomon said.

“We initially tried in the spring in the fiscal session. Of course, the financial

outpoint was pretty grim at that point and so we agreed to our request being tabled [by the Joint Budget Committee], and we brought it back now that things have improved,” she said.

Solomon told the Legislative Council on Friday the pay scale for the state Supreme Court’s law clerks is based on their experience and “that’s what we seek to achieve, too.

“A starting salary at our court would make what a starting salary law clerk makes at the Supreme Court,” she said.

“Right now, our most senior law clerk who has 30 years experience makes less than a starting salary law clerk at the Supreme Court, who might not even have a law license,” Solomon said.

The state Supreme Court created a tiered system for advancement among its law clerks based on their experience level, Chief Justice Dan Kemp has said, and he hopes the system provides an incentive for the high court’s law clerks to stay put instead of looking elsewhere.

Some justices lost longtime law clerks in recent years for higher-paying jobs before the court boosted the law clerks’ salaries, effective Jan. 1.

In a Dec. 6 letter to state Supreme Court Clerk Stacey Pectol, Kemp said the high court updated the salaries for staff members in each justice’s chambers “in an effort to bring uniformity and predictability to salary increases and to incentivize employees to obtain relevant experience to better serve the court and the citizens of Arkansas.”

The Supreme Court under Act 897 of 2019 has implemented a new salary schedule for attorneys and administrative assistants comparable to the attorney general’s office, Kemp wrote in his letter.

During the Legislative Council’s meeting Friday, no one brought the fact Kemp, chief justice for the Arkansas Supreme Court, and Gruber, chief judge for the Court of Appeals, disagreed earlier this year about interpreting the law on salaries of law clerks,

Kemp said earlier this year the state Supreme Court interprets Arkansas Code Annotated 16-12-108 (f) (1) to mean that the law clerks at the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals have the same pay range.

But Gruber said earlier this year “the way the Court of Appeals interpreted it as far as the law clerks is they make the same salaries.”

After the Legislative Council’s meeting, Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, said Friday he wasn’t aware Kemp has disagreed with Gruber’s interpretation of the state law.

“There has been some discussion [among lawmakers] that we may need to clean up that language in the session because it does say they’ll be paid the same and [that language] probably should delve in a little deeper and have more detail,” Hickey said in an interview.

“I expect that to probably come up in the session,” he said. The regular session is scheduled to begin on Jan. 11.