Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Madison — The head of the state Supreme Court is seeking pay raises of more than $20,000 a year for herself and other judges because she says judicial pay in Wisconsin has slipped near the bottom nationally.

Some of the state’s most powerful lobbying groups have joined Chief Justice Patience Roggensack in asking Gov. Scott Walker to boost pay for judges. Among them are Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association — groups that often take a dim view on increasing costs for taxpayers.

Roggensack’s plan would cost $6.4 million a year and boost judicial pay by 16%.

In an interview, Roggensack noted Wisconsin ranks 41st in the country for pay for trial judges, according to the National Center for State Courts.

“When has Wisconsin ever wanted to be 41st with anything?” she said. “I’d like to at least be in the middle of the pack.”

With state finances tight and workers around Wisconsin seeing flat wages, such a pay hike will be difficult to move through the Legislature.

"It seems excessive to me," said Sen. Rob Cowles (R-Allouez). "It's a big jump in the context of a possibly difficult state budget. ... I'm sure they're worth it. The question is how do you come up with cash on an ongoing basis?"

“Right now any entity asking for funding increases will have a tough row to hoe,” said Rep. Joel Kleefisch (R-Oconomowoc). “Fortunately, overwhelmingly our justices and judges have such a commitment to the judicial process that regardless of pay, we maintain the best jurists in the country.”

Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said it “would be premature” to say whether the Republican governor will include the pay increase in the state budget he will introduce in February.

Under Roggensack’s plan, pay for circuit judges would rise from about $131,000 to about $152,000; for appeals court judges from about $139,000 to about $161,000; and for Supreme Court justices from about $147,000 to about $171,000.

Roggensack was elected chief justice by her colleagues in 2015 and is on the court’s 5-2 conservative majority. In that role, she has emphasized the need to raise the pay for judges.

The Wisconsin Trial Judges Association is working with Roggensack to get the pay raise. That group has hired lobbyist Bill McCoshen to work on the issue.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Mary Kuhnmuench, who is involved with the association, said lagging pay has reduced the number of qualified people willing to run for judgeships. Municipal judges in Milwaukee make more than circuit judges, Kuhnmuench said.

“We are at the tail end right now and have fallen over the course of the last 10 years” compared to other states, she said.

Kuhnmuench said she understands that many workers have not seen raises in recent years but believes the public would understand the need to increase pay for judges when it sees how they compared to judges in other states.

That’s particularly true because judges and other public employees now have to pay more for their benefits under Act 10, the 2011 measure that greatly reduced collective bargaining for public workers, she said.

Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who sits on the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, said he wanted to review how pay for judges here compares to other states. But he said he has not seen a problem with finding good people who want to serve on the bench.

“If we’ve got a problem, it’s assistant (district attorneys) and things like that,” he said.

The move comes as Roggensack is putting in place a pilot program that would create business courts in Waukesha County and the Fox Valley. Cases in those courts would involve businesses that sue each other and move more quickly.

Creating such courts helped get the support of the business groups for the salary hike. In a letter to the governor sent Tuesday, the groups wrote they “would support additional funding for judicial compensation that would place Wisconsin judges more in line with their counterparts in other states.” Their letter did not say how big the increase should be.

“It’s important to keep pay scales at a level where we can appeal to folks to run for the court, especially when you want certain skill sets like a business background,” said Brandon Scholz of the Wisconsin Grocers Association, one of those to sign the letter.

Also signing the letter were groups representing builders, bankers, food processors, dairies, road builders, contractors, small businesses, wine and liquor wholesalers, restaurants, insurers, hospitals, convenience stores and the paper industry.