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Friday, May 30, 2008
Judged fairly, pay packages cost us dearly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The president of the State Bar of Georgia, Gerald M. Edenfield of Statesboro, writes to express the extreme disappointment of lawyers that Gov. Sonny Perdue vetoed “the first substantial salary increase” for judges in nine years.
Lawyers studied the issues and concluded that judges’ pay should be raised by 20 percent, which was reduced to 5 percent, plus cost-of-living adjustments, by the Legislature.
But Perdue rejected the popular option and did something responsible and revolutionary, setting a precedent that every future governor should follow — and not just for judges. He looked at the whole compensation package. He explained in his veto message.
“I have consistently expressed concern with raising judicial officers’ salaries without tackling the well-above-market retirement benefits.” What’s more, he said, a review that he’d commissioned by employee-benefits consultants at New York-based Mercer LLC finds judicial pay to be “in line with competitor states and various counsel.”
In Georgia, Supreme Court justices earn $167,210. Their counterparts in Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia average $153,356, according to the study. Superior Court judges are paid $120,252 by the state, but, with one exception — the Alapaha circuit, which covers five counties extending north from the Okefonokee Swamp — counties supplement their pay. The average is $35,160.
My specific interest here is not what judges make. Whether they’re underpaid or overpaid is entirely dependent on the quality of an individual’s service. The fact is, and has always been, that salaries are public record and the applicant pool is always full. When bad judges rise to the bench, far more often than not, it’s because a governor put them there at the expense of better-qualified applicants.
“We are looking for the best and the brightest of the public minded,” said Perdue this week, “not the best and the brightest that money can buy.” This particular veto and the affected group are the backdrop, really, for a far more important story.
Those who’ve followed the latest accounts of Atlanta’s budget woes know that city officials blame this year’s problems on high health care and pension costs, exacerbated by a short-sighted decision to buy off unruly employees with future money. In 2001, it adopted a formula change for computing police and fire benefits that was foolish, dramatically increasing long-term costs.
Business and government — especially government, because it can levy taxes to cover its recklessness — should therefore look not just to pay but to the cost of benefits, current and future. That’s what Perdue did on the proposed judicial pay increase. The Mercer review “confirmed that the judiciary’s retirement benefits are far above market average.”
When Mercer compared the total compensation of judges to peers in the private sector, it found that they ranked fifth of 94 in the peer group on total benefits — in large part because benefits are backloaded, as was the custom for public employees. At age 60, judges with 16 years’ service can retire with two-thirds of their highest salaries; at 24 years, the maximum, it would be three-fourths. For appellate court judges, that’s about $9,200 per month after 16 years on the bench.
Perdue’s begun a process to modernize the public-employee compensation system. Recognizing that few now spend an entire career with one employer, he’s begun to look at the whole compensation package. The aim is to raise salaries early by moving some of that backloaded compensation forward. The best solution would be to move from defined-benefit to defined-contribution plans that would allow workers to take their full retirement benefits with them to new jobs.
For taxpayers the marvelous side effect of changing the way we compensate public employees could be to remove the temptation by employees to game the retirement system and by politicians to corrupt it. That’s been the pattern for decades.
On this issue, Perdue is cutting-edge. He could save Georgia from Atlanta’s financial fate.
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CRCT, menthol, a ‘bloody fortune’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama spoke to graduates of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., the day before Memorial Day. Topic was the usual commencement fare: the obligation to perform “service to one’s country.” He mentioned them all. An entire laundry list. Except one. Military service. This is as close as he came: “At a time of war, we need you to work for peace.” It doesn’t occur to our would-be commander-in-chief to invite the college-educated to consider a career in uniform.
Be thankful, though, that good people do choose military service. Case in point today is Fort Stewart’s 3rd Infantry Division, which has brought a measure of peace and stability to the “Triangle of Death” region south of Baghad and across central Iraq. The division is on its way home. All Georgia, indeed all of America, should cheer their service and success.
I read the comments, a number of them, of local school superintendents on the high failure rate on the statewide Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests on the new social studies and more rigorous math curricula. Observation: They had a chance to lead, to explain, and instead they whined and passed the buck, determined to make certain the locals knew it was not their fault.
A critical bit of information was missing from the story headlined “Teen accused of grabbing, biting women’s buttocks.” Now, how tall was he?
The left is determined to destroy the tobacco industry in America. First the high taxes and lawsuits to “recover” the medical costs associated with smoking. Now they’re playing the race card, insisting that menthol be banned as a tobacco flavoring, along with chocolate, strawberry and other candy flavorings that are said to appeal to the young. Menthol is not included in the flavoring ban now working its way through Congress. But wait. About 75 percent of blacks who smoke prefer menthol. Not banning it “gives the appearance that the lives of black youngsters are valued less than white youngsters,” said Dr. Louis Sullivan, former secretary of Health & Human Services. Goodness gracious. Just plain goodness gracious. Is there no race card we won’t play to win an election, legislation or policy debate?
The folly of the state’s monopoly-creating and antiquated certificate of need regulation of hospital construction, expansion and equipment could not be more evident than in the effort to revive Southwest Atlanta Hospital. It’s failed twice or more in the marketplace and relied most recently on nostalgia and guilt trips on young medical professionals and the black middle class to succeed. Now it’s trying again. Its primary asset: a state license to operate a hospital. Georgia really should get rid of that CON law.
Headline: “New Lebanese president urges unity.” Is the appeal from the winner ever otherwise? And here, “unity” may not be good. The election ended a stalemate, but Hezbollah gets veto power over all government decisions. Poor Lebanon.
Want to get rich —- and therefore become somebody liberal Democrats hate? Follow the advice of John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group Inc., the nation’s second-largest mutual fund company. Save a part of what you earn. Invest. Hold. He has “a bloody fortune” and “I didn’t really do anything except save all the time,” starting with 15 percent of his first monthly check of $250 in 1951.
Big Brother, my foot. A proposal to require employers to submit Social Security numbers of proposed hires to the federal government to make certain they’re legals would be costly —- about $10 billion over nine years —- but it’s not Big Brother, as critics assert. This would eliminate the argument that employers who hire illegals are the problem.
Be thankful for our blessings and for every day we have on this earth. A Tennessee woman, who died this week, spent almost 60 years of her life in an iron lung. “Everyone she encountered came to her because they cared about her,” said the president of a foundation that helped support her medical needs, “so she grew up in her 61 years thinking every person is good.”
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