Republican Sidetracks Judicial-Pay Bill

Friday March 28, 2008

Republicans don’t usually get their way in this Democratic-dominated General Assembly.
But Rep. Kevin DelGobbo, R-Naugatuck, (whose name is conveniently left out of the alphabetical listing of House members in the 2007 Blue Book) scored one in the Appropriations Committee today.
DelGobbo, ranking member of the committee, persuaded his colleagues to amend a bill that would have given judges pay raises, without legislative action, whenever executive agency supervisors got them.
DelGobbo said he was worried about tying executive-branch decisions to the judicial branch.
DelGobbo pointed out that a nonpartisan staff study indicates that executive-branch salaries pump up about 6 percent a year.He then offered the amendment that would give judges and magistrates three-percent raises this year, but that’s it.
The latest pay hike for rank-and-file Superior Court judges occurred on January 1, 2007, bringing their salaries to $146,780 a year.
“I’m kind of persuaded by you,” Rep. Denise Merrill, D-Mansfield, committee co-chairwoman. The amendment passed in a voice vote and the overall legislation, which heads to the Senate, was approved easily.
.The original bill included lawmakers themselves tied into the automatic-raise mechanism, but that was excised, it being an election year and all.