State reinstates pay for emergency work (Winston-Salem Journal)
Judges who fill in for their colleagues will now be getting paid again for their services.
The director of Administrative Office of the Courts suspended pay for emergency judges in April after the General Assembly cut the department’s budget by 6 percent.
Retired judges had agreed to volunteer after payment for emergency judges was suspended.
Emergency judges are retired or current judges who fill in for their colleagues for any number of reasons, including illness, death in the family or conflict of interest.
They are paid $400 a day for their services, and the Administrative Office of the Courts spends about $1 million a year on emergency judges, who are also reimbursed for travel and meals.
The payments were reinstated briefly in August after Gov. Bev Perdue and state legislators agreed on a budget.
But John W. Smith, the director of Administrative Office of the Courts, stopped the payments when Perdue ordered state agencies to cut their spending by 5 percent.
Sharon Gladwell, a spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the Courts, said yesterday that the department has saved enough money from the cuts to resume paying emergency judges.
But she said that there’s no guarantee that the payments won’t be suspended in the future.
“If we exhaust the funds or are confronted with other cutbacks, we will have to reassess,” she said.
The tight budget also forced court officials to cut spending by leaving vacant positions unfilled.
Superior Court judges were ordered to stay in their home counties to save travel expenses, and mileage reimbursements dropped by half — from 50 cents to 25 cents a mile.
Perdue also asked judges to take a voluntary pay cut of 0.5 percent.
Of the 395 judges statewide, 376 agreed to the cut.
By Michael Hewlett [email protected]
Published: October 2, 2009
