End full-time pay for part-time work

The bodies that govern counties in Kentucky are the Fiscal Courts. They are composed of county judges/executive and, for the most part, magistrates, although some counties use commissioners. By state law, the magistrates have no official duties other than to attend each meeting of the Fiscal Courts, make proposals and vote on all matters that come before it.

Pike County has six magistrates on its Court. They receive, by way of compensation, salaries and benefits that far outweigh what is actually demanded of them. The annual salary is $48,000. The county also provides each magistrate with an office and hires someone to answer the phones for them. Each magistrate is also provided with a vehicle, gas and tires. Not sloppy for part-time work.

All of this should be common knowledge. Larry Webster, who once penned his widely-read column Red Dog for the Appalachian News-Express, used to comment regularly on what he called our part-time magistrates.

The magistrates’ situation has recently come to light again because the county expects to experience what for it will be a rather large deficit in next year’s budget. Rather than approve a 1% occupational tax proposed by Judge Rutherford, the court decided instead to adopt an austere budget that will cut many of the county’s most needed programs and also cut county employees’ salaries by an estimated $800,000. Well, not all of the county’s employees are taking cuts. The magistrates will still get their part-time pay of $48,000, plus perks.

Magisterial work wasn’t always part-time. Prior to the adoption of the judicial reform amendment in 1976, magistrates, aka Justices of the Peace, actually held court. That meant that these members of the fiscal court could actually put people on trial, even though a lot of them were lucky to have even a high school diploma. That ended when this amendment required a law degree for anyone who would preside over any court of law.

After the passage of the judicial reform amendment, the J. P.’s became simple magistrates. Now they are like members of a city council, except of course the pay is much better. So far as I am aware, state law alone defines the duties of a magistrate. If there are any county ordinances on the matter, I am completely unaware of them.

But perhaps that should change. For instance, pay for these jobs should be commensurate with the work that is actually done. We could even demand a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. And that might even include answering your own phone. In other words, if you’re a magistrate, you would no longer be allowed to work full-time elsewhere, while collecting full-time pay for what amounts to part-time work.

You also might want to take away some of the more outrageous perks these jobs offer. The first to go should be the vehicles provided by the county. That would also end the free gas and tires. The money saved would pay county employees to do work that is desperately needed by the county’s citizens.

Of course, if a magistrate insisted on holding down full-time employment elsewhere, provisions might be made by paying those magistrates only for those hours they actually work. That’s the way, after all, it’s done with the rest of the county employees.