Roberts: courts pay too much rent
on Dec 31, 2005 at 10:21 pm
(The Chief Justice’s year-end report was issued by the Court with an embargo on publication until just after midnight Sunday. News accounts of the report, however, have appeared Saturday evening on other online sites — some as early as shortly after 8 p.m. Because other sites have treated the report as available for early publication, this blog — following a custom among news organizations in similar circumstances — is going ahead with its own account.)
(UPDATE January 1, 2006: The report is available on the Court’s website, here.)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in his first annual report on the state of the courts, contended that the federal courts are paying too much rent for their space and, in fact, are being treated unfairly as a tenant.
“Unlike many other elements of the federal government,†Roberts said, “the judiciary is required to pay a large and ever-increasing portion of its budget as rent to another part of the government – the General Services Administration.†(GSA is the government’s property manager, among its other duties.)
The Chief Justice cited data, compiled by the courts, that they are spending almost 16 percent of their total budget on rent to GSA. By contrast, he said, “the Executive Branch as a whole spends less than two-tenths of one percent of its budget on GSA rent.â€
The total the courts paid for rent during the fiscal year that ended Oct. 1 was $926 million, Roberts said. But, he contended, it cost GSA only $426 million to provide that space. He did not explain the difference between the two figures, but his complaint was very clear: “The federal judiciary cannot continue to serve as a profit center for GSA.â€
His message did not suggest a solution. The judiciary, he said, must “find a long-term solution to the problem of ever-increasing rent payments that drain resources needed for the courts to fulfill their vital mission.â€
As Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist regularly did in his year-end reports, Roberts registered a new and fervent protest that federal judges are paid too little. The new Chief Justice said that judges are leaving the bench in increasing numbers, at least partly due to the salary scales. Since 1990, he recalled, 92 judges have ended their court careers, with 21 leaving before they reached retirement age. In the past five years alone, 37 judges have given up their seats, and nine did so in the last year.
Despite Rehnquist’s repeated calls for higher pay, Roberts said, “the situation has gotten worse, not better.†Even if Congress were to raise judges’ salaries now by 30 percent, he estimated, that would put them at their 1969 salary level, after adjusting for inflation.
The Chief Justice also called for action by all branches of government to take steps to improve safety and security for judges and court employees, “both within and outside courthouses.†He cited the murders of the husband and mother of a federal judge in Chicago by “a disappointed litigant†and the killing of a judge, a court reporter, and a police officer by a prisoner at a courthouse in Atlanta.
Roberts suggested he was being “a bit presumptuous†to issue a year-end report, barely three months after taking the oath as Chief Justice.†But, he said, he would not break a 30-year-old tradition, begun by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.
