Putnam Equalizes Judge’s Salaries

Putnam County has approved a change matching the pay between general sessions and circuit court judges working in the county.

County Commission and Budget Committee Chairperson Ben Rodgers said the general sessions judges requested the change because their caseload has become very large and covers such a wide area. Rodgers said the change makes it so that both kinds of judges will be paid equally even as their salaries change in the future.

“And I think this is just a way of showing the judges that we appreciate what they do, we understand their workload is heavy,” Rodgers said. “So therefore it wasn’t a problem doing this because we found a way to pay for it. It did not affect property tax owners or any, anybody in that realm of paying taxes.”

Rodgers said the recent increase in court filing fees will completely pay for the increase in salaries. He said the new salaries will not go into effect until the judges’ next term.

“That’s just state law,” Rodgers said. “Just like county commissioners. If we wanted to vote in ourselves a raise per meeting that we get paid for, we could vote it in now, but it wouldn’t take effect until our next, the next term.”

Rodgers said the amount of work the general sessions judges have to handle is not going to decrease any time soon unless they can get approval from the state for a third judge.

“It’s not a big increase in salaries,” Rodgers said. “I don’t even remember what the total was, but it wasn’t much more than a few thousand dollars.”

Rodgers said the general sessions judges are the ones who originally pointed out to him that Putnam County’s filing fees were so much less than other nearby counties.