Also know as Payraise and Payjack.
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- Pay raise-plank-Ogden
- Pay raise-plank-Casey about PA Treasurer and his signing checks from September 2006
- Pay raise-plank-Schlosser, Libertarian candidate from Arizona for US Congress in 2006
Details[]
Pay-raise ruling remains intact[]
- Source: Nov. 10, 2006, By Mark Scolforo, Associated Press [1]
The Pa. high court said the law's legality will not be reargued. An activist says he won't stop his fight.
HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has let stand its decision to restore pay raises to high court justices and other judges.
In a pair of one-page rulings, the court said it would not allow Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer (R., Blair) or plaintiff Gene Stilp to reargue the legality of the pay-raise law. Both rulings were 6-0, with Chief Justice Ralph J. Cappy, who had lobbied the Legislature for the pay raises, not participating.
Stilp wanted the court to reconsider whether the General Assembly passed the July 2005 governmental pay raises in accord with requirements of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
The pay raises were repealed four months later after a public outcry.
In September, the Supreme Court reinstated the pay raises for judges.
Stilp also wanted to clarify whether state judges will automatically collect future salary increases when Congress grants them to federal judges.
"I'm disappointed the Supreme Court is going to allow the Legislature to function in such a slipshod manner in regard to passing such legislation," Stilp said.
Stilp, a citizen activist and critic of the Legislature, vowed to make the ruling a campaign issue in next year's Supreme Court elections.
Jubelirer asked the court to review its ruling that allowed judges' pay to be reinstated despite the law's "nonseverability" clause. Such clauses, commonly included in legislation, make an entire law invalid if any of its elements is thrown out.
Senate Republican general counsel Stephen MacNett called the decision on nonseverability legally incorrect and predicted it will make compromise more difficult to reach.
"It's going to make it harder to enact complicated pieces of legislation that can only be enacted if there's an understanding that all parts of the legislation are going to work, are going to be treated in the same fashion," he said.
Jubelirer also argued that the nonseverability clause did not improperly infringe on the judicial branch's powers.
PA Payraise suit was dismissed by federal judge, Monday, June 12, 2006[]
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Common Cause Pennsylvania, the League of Women Voters and several individuals seeking court oversight over what the plaintiffs had characterized as a corrupted lawmaking process.
- The suit, based on the controversial salary increase law of 2005, argued the consideration of that bill was the latest example of a pattern of abuses by the state�s top legislative leaders and appelate court justices that had the effect of neutering representative democracy. But U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane found that the complaints alleged in the lawsuit are of a broad, general nature that are not the province of the federal courts.
- "...The matters of which plaintiffs complain belong to the political and electoral process. For over two hundred years, our people have trusted these processes to restrain their elected officials from abusing the power of office and making a mockery of our laws. It is not for this court to alter the course of history now."
A separate case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the 2005 pay raise law is still pending.
Citizens Against Government Waste Slams US Congressional Pay Raise[]
CCAGW has criticized the House of Representatives for voting to allow congressional pay to rise by $3,300 next year. In 1989, Congress amended the law to give members of the House and Senate an automatic, annual "cost of living" increase unless members hold a specific vote to cancel it. The House this month voted 249 to 167 to reject a procedural attempt to get a direct vote on the 2007 pay raise, marking the sixth straight year that Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) was defeated in his attempt to secure a separate up-or-down vote on the annual pay hikes. Unless changed by the Senate, rank-and-file members of Congress will make $168,500 starting in January 2007. "Serving in Congress is the only job in the country where you can set your own salary without regard to performance or fiscal constraints," CCAGW President Tom Schatz said. "In an era of bitter political division, there is one position that members of both parties rally behind: fattening their paychecks at the expense of taxpayers." More about the congressional pay raise, [2].
Appeals in Federal Court[]
- PennLive.com: NewsFlash - Dismissal of Pa. pay-raise lawsuit appealed] July, 2006 -- HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Activists seeking to ban the tactics that lawmakers used to give a pay raise to themselves, judges and other high-level government officials have appealed a federal judge's dismissal of their lawsuit.
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Links[]
- PA pay scandal-news-Heartland from November, 2006
- Pay-raise tale 'a dark chapter' in state's history, Casey says The Morning Call, December 2006
News Coverage From Philly[]
Template:Payraise News Links from Philly