Provision Authorizing Extra Pay for L.A. Judges Is Slipped Into Budget. Without any public hearings or notification, legislators slipped a huge perk for Los Angeles judges into the state budget. The just-approved budget includes language authorizing Los Angeles County to provide extra payments to L.A. Superior Court judges – a formal authorization of a practice that has been going on for years, but was ruled illegal last year by a state appellate court.
The payments, totaling $47,726 per year for each judge, on top of their $178,789 salary and very generous health and retirement benefits, were ruled illegal because the state sets salaries for judges – a provision intended to prevent judges from being bribed by or beholden to local officials. With the new legislation giving the state's blessing to the payments, the Los Angeles County officials can legally continue giving the extra pay.
Political columnist Dan Walters, writing in The Sacramento Bee, said: "One wonders how Los Angeles County's taxpayers would have reacted had they known that the Legislature was approving extra judicial payments while the county's supervisors are staring at a $200 million budget deficit and contemplating steep cuts in services, especially those to the poor and unemployed, in a county with a jobless rate of nearly 11 percent." (Source: The Sacramento Bee, March 4.)
Cal-Taxletter, March 6, 2009
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