Paycheck pettiness

Pay raises tend to be modest for the rank-and-file in state government these days, but the Arkansas Supreme Court wants the word “supreme” to mean something, darnit.

For the third time since 2015, the Supreme Court has asked the independent pay commission to remunerate more appropriately its hierarchical pre-eminence.

It wants the commission to give its members extra raises to distinguish them more clearly on the pay scale from pedestrian members of the Arkansas Court of Appeals, who, after all, aren’t nearly as important.

This is what currently passes for judicial temperament at the highest level in Arkansas—petty spatting about comparative pay among people who are paid more than is nationally logical already.

The six Arkansas Supreme Court associate justices are already the 26thbest-paid state supreme court justices in the country, at $174,924 per, even better as factored in the cost of living.

That’s a lot better than Arkansas pay stacks up nationally for most other people, who labor for the 48th-ranked per capita income in the nation.

But the problem—at least in the insular world of Supreme Court ego gratification and turf protection—is that the members of the Arkansas Court of Appeals have the 18th-highest appeals court salaries in the country, at $169,671 per. Thus, the difference between a supreme and a non-supreme is only about $5,000.

To add insult to the Supremes’ injury, the judges on the court of appeals are elected from districts and get paid mileage to travel to and from Little Rock. The Supremes are statewide officers presumed to live where they work, meaning Little Rock. They don’t get any mileage.

So, those piddling court of appeals judges, if they drive far enough, can get bigger direct deposits from the state treasury than the Supremes. And that just ain’t right. Mild-mannered Supreme Court Chief Justice Dan Kemp, who is paid extra and plenty already, at $189,108, did his woeful duty again last week, as he did without success two years ago.

He traipsed over to the pay commission to say that, while he personally would be happy with just the 3 percent cost-of-living raise recommended in the Arkansas Judicial Council report he was presenting, his six Supreme Court colleagues should get, beyond that 3 percent, another $5,000 to put some distance between them and their lessers.

Weeks ago, I’d been reliably informed that the Council had recommended the $5,000 extra for Supreme Court members largely at the behest of the Supreme Court associate justice, Shawn Womack, who sits on the Council’s board of directors. He lives in Mountain Home, admittedly a pretty good commute to Little Rock.

But the report Kemp received and conveyed omitted that proposal.

The chief justice made the request, anyway, for reasons he declined to explain.

Obviously, some of the other six justices wanted the money. Womack might be a possibility, but he declined to return my call. Justices Jo Hart and Karen Baker had advocated extraordinary raises for the Supreme justices in 2015. That’d be three of the six. One more and we’d have a majority.

There are plenty of strong reasons for Supreme Court case deliberations to be secret. But there’s no good reason at all for purely administrative matters—i.e., whining about pay—to be secret.

There are two ready solutions.

One would be for persons not to run for the Supreme Court, but the Court of Appeals, or traveling salesman, if mileage reimbursement is what they want.

The other would be for the pay commission to order $10,000 pay reductions across the board for Supreme Court justices, Court of Appeals judge and the various circuit judges, whose pay is 16th in the country at $168,096 per.

That would bring our judge salaries more in line with other states.

If you can’t get by on $164,924— $10,000 less than you’re getting now— then maybe you need to get off the Supreme Court, hang a shingle and file some lawsuits against doctors, hospitals and nursing homes.

Alas, through it all, there remain two curiosities. One is why are our judges paid so much, relatively speaking? There’s no indication they’re any better than other states’ judges.

The other is why our supreme justices, overpaid already by national norm, deem themselves entitled to even more, except, as has been explained, they want more status-honoring distance between them and their inferiors.

Speaking of those inferiors, there has been some talk that, if the Supreme Court justices get this $5,000 ego-booster from the pay commission, which has the proposal under advisement, the Court of Appeals judges might ask for a similar spike to put distance between them and circuit judges.

Isn’t it interesting to know that, if you wind up in a dispute before a top state appellate court, you’ll be at the mercy of people in robes who just came in from a fuss-fight over play-pretties during recess on the playground?