Lawmakers reach last-minute deal on pay raises for Texas judges
AUSTIN (Nexstar) – Lawmakers worked into the final hours of the legislative session to reach an agreement to provide pay raises for Texas judges. The legislation led to a sharp divide between the House and Senate over how the raises would affect pensions for lawmakers.
Senate Bill 293 calls for raising the pay for judges to $175,000 per year. That’s a 25% increase from the current $140,000 salary. The legislation comes amid concern that Texas lags behind other states in judicial pay.
“Texas cannot afford to continue to lose talent due to a lack of appropriate compensation,” the analysis for SB 293 states.
The idea of raising pay for judges has bipartisan support. The division comes over how those raises affect funds for retiring lawmakers. Currently, pensions for lawmakers are calculated as a percentage of the base pay for judges. Raising judges pay would also raise retirement benefits for lawmakers.
Some House members believed that amounted to unethically approving a benefit for themselves. Their legislation included an amendment to keep decouple lawmaker pensions from judicial base pay, instead keeping it linked to the current level of $140,000.
“I do not believe, speaking for me that this is the right way for us to consider and/or pass increases to our legislative retirement,” Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, said Friday, explaining why the House added the amendment. He called on the Senate to accept the House amendment.
“I can tell you that if they want judges to get a pay raise, then they should move to concur with the House changes to Senate Bill 293, and in the interim and next session, we can have and should have a conversation about legislative compensation, including our retirement benefits,” Leach said.
When the legislation came before the Senate Friday night, Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, raised a point of order, saying that the amendment was not germane to the legislation. He agreed that legislation to revamp how lawmaker pensions are calculated should happen separately from SB 293.
The point of order was sustained, potentially killing SB 293 and pay raises for judges. Senators called on House members to remove the amendment. House members pushed to keep the measure to decouple judicial pay from pensions for lawmakers.
With the House and Senate deadlocked, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock weighed in with a potential compromise. On Saturday, he sent a memo to members of the legislature, including proposed language for the bill. Blacklock’s proposal would maintain the link between judicial pay and legislator pensions, but the impact of a pay raise approved this session would not immediately affect those pensions. Instead, Blacklock proposes that the next legislature would determine the effect.
“As you know, judicial salaries in Texas currently rank 49th in the Nation – an embarrassment that is making it harder and harder to attract and retain qualified, hard-working judges capable of delivering a high quality of justice to Texas families and businesses across our State,” Blacklock wrote. He added that he fears the long-range impact, should the impasse keep judges from getting a raise.
“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,” Blacklock wrote.
Monday afternoon, word of the agreement was announced in the Senate. “The House and the Senate came together, and the result of the conference committee report and the legislation will lead to the judges getting this raise,” Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said as she laid out the conference committee report.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on a bill that wasn’t mine,” Sen. Menéndez said, acknowledging the difficulty of the negotiations that started after his point of order, then stretched into the final day of the session.
“We went over and met with our House colleagues, and all 10 of us signed the conference committee report, because every person in the state of Texas recognizes that our judiciary and our judges needed a much needed raise so we can continue to attract competent persons to our judiciary,” he said.
Senators did not discuss specifics of the agreement on the floor. In the House, Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas asked Rep. Leach to give further details.
“The bill raises the judicial base pay, salary, 25% to $175,000 along with that, the legislative retirement is linked, at least initially, to that $175,000,” Leach explained. He said going forward, the Texas Ethics Commission will decide how much legislative retirement pay should rise.
“We are requiring the Texas Ethics Commission every five years to adjust the legislative class retirement accordingly, taking into account various factors. Of those factors they’re allowed to consider all statewide elected official judges from all branches of government, judicial, legislative and executive,” Leach said, responding to Anchia’s question.
Leach said the changes allow the legislature to increase judicial pay, and in the future do so without worrying about it affecting the pensions of lawmakers. “That’s, I think, the real big win in this bill,” he concluded.
The measure passed 114-26. The legislation now goes to Governor Abbott for approval.
