Lawmakers have boosted the spending authority of the state Court of Appeals by about $638,000 so its law clerks can receive pay raises putting their salaries on a level similar to those of law clerks of the Arkansas Supreme Court.
The raises for the Court of Appeals' 24 law clerks will range from about $12,000 to about $22,000 a year, Anne Solomon, chief staff attorney for the court, said Friday.
The salaries of the appeals court law clerks now range from $71,345 to $84,827 a year, while the pay of the Supreme Court's 14 clerks ranges from $86,250 to $101,774, state records show.
The appeals court's three staff attorneys and chief staff attorney also will get raises because otherwise the law clerks would make more than they do and the four are required to have more experience, Solomon said.
The three staff attorneys are paid $71,500, $74,930 and $81,920 a year, while the chief staff attorney is paid $92,023, according to the Arkansas Transparency website.
The approval granted Friday by the Arkansas Legislative Council is for fiscal 2021, which started July 1. It breaks down to about $506,000 in regular salaries and about $162,000 for personal services matching costs.
The raises would be retroactive to the first pay period of fiscal 2021, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Rita Gruber wrote in a letter dated Tuesday to the Legislative Council co-chairmen, Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers, and Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, R-Hermitage.
Gruber said the Court of Appeals requested increased spending authority for the law clerks' salaries under Arkansas Code Annotated 16-12-108(f)(1), which states, "Law Clerks to the Court of Appeals shall receive the same salaries as Supreme Court law clerks."
Solomon told the Legislative Council that "around January 2020, we realized by the Transparency website that the Supreme Court had awarded raises to its law clerks.
"That was first that we knew about it," she said. "So at that point, we began going forward to try to achieve parity.
"We initially tried in the spring in the fiscal session. Of course, the financial outpoint was pretty grim at that point and so we agreed to our request being tabled [by the Joint Budget Committee], and we brought it back now that things have improved," Solomon said.
During the fiscal session, the appeals court asked the Legislature to increase the court's spending authority for salaries in fiscal 2021 by $500,036 and its spending authority for personal services matching costs by $160,012 because Gruber said the Supreme Court raised its clerks' salaries to between $85,000 and $101,000, effective Jan. 1 of this year.
Solomon told the Legislative Council on Friday that the pay scale for the Supreme Court's law clerks is based on their experience, and "that's what we seek to achieve, too.
"A starting salary at our court would make what a starting-salary law clerk makes at the Supreme Court," she said.
"Right now, our most senior law clerk who has 30 years' experience makes less than a starting-salary law clerk at the Supreme Court, who might not even have a law license," Solomon said.
The Supreme Court created a tiered system for advancement among its law clerks based on their experience level, Chief Justice Dan Kemp has said, and he hopes the system provides an incentive for the high court's clerks to stay put instead of looking elsewhere. Some justices had lost longtime clerks to higher-paying jobs in recent years before the raises took effect.
In a letter dated Dec. 6, 2019, to state Supreme Court Clerk Stacey Pectol, Kemp said the high court updated the salaries for staff members in each justice's chambers "in an effort to bring uniformity and predictability to salary increases and to incentivize employees to obtain relevant experience to better serve the court and the citizens of Arkansas."
The Supreme Court under Act 897 of 2019 has implemented a new salary schedule for attorneys and administrative assistants that is comparable to that in the attorney general's office, Kemp wrote in his letter.
During Friday's meeting, no one brought up the fact that Kemp and Gruber disagreed earlier this year about interpreting the law on law clerks' salaries.
Kemp had said in an interview that the Supreme Court interprets Arkansas Code Annotated 16-12-108(f)(1) to mean that the law clerks at the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals have the same pay range.
But Gruber had said that "the way the Court of Appeals interpreted it as far as the law clerks is they make the same salaries."
After Friday's meeting, Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, said he wasn't aware that Kemp has disagreed with Gruber's interpretation of the law.
"There has been some discussion [among lawmakers] that we may need to clean up that language in the [regular legislative] session because it does say they'll be paid the same and [that language] probably should delve in a little deeper and have more detail," Hickey said in an interview.
"I expect that to probably come up in the session," he said. The regular session is scheduled to begin Jan. 11.