A state panel reviewing pay and benefits for Maine judges is learning that, like every other important aspect of Maine’s societal infrastructure, judicial pay suffers from economic erosion and neglect.

Like the state’s court system itself, the hardest hit in the nation by budget cuts, the judges who work within it are overloaded and underfunded.

Per-capita spending on courts here is $18.99, well below the national average of $31.18. Maine is an anomaly even within its own region. Vermont, $27, and New Hampshire, $29, both manage respectable levels of per-capita support for their court systems.

No surprise, then, that the Judicial Compensation Commission, established by the Legislature to review periodically the wage and benefit packages of Maine’s judges, is finding the same pattern of salary attrition for those who sit on the bench.

For the first time in four years, judges here in 1995 received a cost of living increase. This modest boost, reflected in statistics from the National Center for State Courts, places Maine 41st in the country for the $85,858 it pays associate justices of its Supreme Court and 35th in the nation for its $81,199 salary for Superior Court judges. Put in a regional perspective, the average pay in the New England states is $97,540 for associates on the high court and $89,543 for the equivalent of Maine’s superior court justices.

As individuals, Maine judges fare very poorly in compensation compared with their counterparts across the United States. Collectively, meanwhile, they are asked to do much more.

Based on population, Maine has the nation’s lowest number of trial judges. The average nationwide is one judge for every 9,200 residents. In Maine, it is 1-to-21,000. Consequently, trial judges here have criminal and civil caseloads 2 1/2 times the national average. Judges in Maine have 3,000 cases. The average across the country is 1,200.

Commitment to the courts

The next Legislature should leave as its legacy a rebuilding court system. For judges, this requires a three-part approach, much of it outlined in testimony by Chief Justice Daniel E. Wathen to the Judicial Compensation Commission, and a timetable. The goal should be to do the following:

Use wages and benefits creatively to restore diversity to the Maine bench. Twelve years ago, the Legislature increased judicial pay but asked judges for the first time to make a substantial contribution to what then was a very attractive retirement package. This policy successfully discouraged the pattern of late-career, mostly male lawyers seeking appointments to capitalize in part on the retirement benefits.

Younger attorneys, a higher proportion of them women, now serve as judges in Maine. Nearly half of new judges, however, go directly from government service to the bench. The retirement package still is a good one. But judicial salaries will have to be increased to make the job appealing to lawyers in private practice.

Achieve parity in pay for the 27 judges of the district and administrative courts who now earn $3,200 a year less than the 16 judges of the Superior Court. As Chief Justice Wathen pointed out to the compensation panelists, the Commission to Study the Future of Maine’s courts concluded earlier in this decade there is no difference in the quality or importance of the work of the state’s trial judges. They should be compensated equally. Most New England states already do this. New Hampshire, for example, pays its district court and general trial judges the same, $89,646.

Once the inequities in the current package of pay and benefits have been corrected, Maine should institute a plan for the long term to bring the state up to a reasonable level in pay and compensation, and keep it there.

The early warning signals of a weakening Maine court system have been evident for some time.

Six years ago, Sen. Ed Muskie documented that three-quarters of the legal needs go unmet for 230,000 Maine people who are below or close to the poverty line. That hasn’t changed.

Today, there are incredibly long delays, two years in some cases, in criminal and civil proceedings. Budget cuts have squeezed the courts, shaving operating time and staff. Tougher laws, meanwhile, for family violence or child abuse have added to the demands on law enforcement authorities, prosecutors and the courts. The responsibility for a just resolution of all those cases ultimately falls where it should, on the judges. Maine should pay them adequately for carrying that burden.