Let’s put all pay raises up for a vote, a state wide refferendum and the question will be. Does Albany deserve a Pay Raise?

Answer would be NO! There, settled, move on, nothing going on here.

Best bet: They’ll all get raises

Okay, so I want you to take a little test. I want your first reaction. You need to go with your primary instinct.

Question one: Should judges who haven’t received a pay raise for many, many years get one? Right now they make a tad short of $137,000 annually. My bet is that your answer is “yes.” After all, we respect judges. We know that if these folks were working in a big law firm, they would be pulling down way more than that.

Hey, if you want the best and the brightest you have to pay for them.
Question two on the Chartock quiz: Should we raise legislators’ pay? After all, these guys work at least a couple of days a week and they say they are always working in their district offices and like that, so why shouldn’t they make more than their paltry $79,500 base salary?

In truth, nearly all of them earn more because of so-called leadership positions. My bet is that New York has more “leaders” than any other state in the nation. Many, but not all, of them have other sources of income. Some have law firms, some are college teachers, some are “consultants,” some own businesses.

So, there you have it. Our quiz demonstrates conclusively that people don’t mind paying judges more (at least the honest ones who don’t take bribes) while most people really don’t want to give legislators pay raises. We all know that. No surprise, therefore, that in their infinite wisdom, the legislators are suggesting that we tie the judges’ pay raise to their own. What’s more, they want yet another commission to do the dirty work. The judges, who are desperate for their pay raise, will certainly go along with the new arrangement. They know, as you know, that under this new arrangement, the legislators will give them the raises so they can get their own.

Enter Steamroller Spitzer, Eliot the Fearless. Since he is really smart, he knows that these people are not to be denied. They will get their pay raises. His job is to say, “Okay, I’ll give you the darned pay raises but I want a fair campaign law that levels the playing field and gives every candidate who is running for office a fair chance.”

Naturally, the Democrats will go for that but the Republicans won’t, since they have the most money which gives them an advantage in elections. Spitzer wants to tie the pay raise bill to the fair campaign bill. If you were Joe Bruno, the powerful Republican Senate leader, would you want to give your enemies an advantage? No, you would not.

And a dirty little secret is that some of the Democratic incumbents are not too happy about a law that would allow their would-be opponents a leg up, since one of politics’ cardinal rules stipulates that “Incumbency is everything.
“The legislators, who fight about everything, are not fighting about this one. They want that pay raise and so with near unanimity they are in favor of the bill. The signal to Spitzer is, “Come on, make our day!” If they all stick together on this and hide behind the judges’ skirts, it appears that they have the votes to override a gubernatorial veto. But not so fast! The people don’t like it when legislators give themselves pay raises and the people are the sleeping giant when it comes to state politics. In fact, there are even a few heroes who are so afraid of that sleeping giant that they have pledged not to take their pay raises.

With a fairly staggering display of chutzpah, the legislator then suggests that, “We want to de-politicize the pay raise issue.” The fact is that the people may be lethargic but they are not dumb. They understand all too well what this is about. Now the legislators will go back to their districts and assess whether they will get away with this. I trust that many of you will have something to say.

My crystal ball tells me that they will pull it off. The judges will get the raises, the Legislature will get the raises, Spitzer (under the rule that everyone gets something) will get some campaign reform. Additionally, he will get a reform of the judicial system so that the hodgepodge of courts we now know will be comprehensively reorganized and he may well get the right to appoint all judges with Senate approval the way he gets to appoint all the judges to the Court of Appeals, New York’s top court.

This makes great sense since everyone knows that we hardly have judicial elections under the current system. What we have is selection by the political bosses. I would rather have our judges selected by the elected governor than the unelected country leaders. That’s the way I see things playing out.
Alan S. Chartock is a political commentator and president and CEO of WAMC.