Daniel Figueroa IV
The Senate wants to give the state’s circuit and county judges a raise this year, according to the Legislature’s latest budget documents.
Senate President Wilton Simpson released the upper chamber’s “sprinkle list” Wednesday. “Sprinkle list” is Capitol jargon referring to last-minute budget items that can help in budget negotiations and provide funding for some pet projects. The lists often amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in project spending. The Senate’s sprinkle list this year represents more than $500 million in funding.
This year’s Senate sprinkle list includes a line item that would increase pay for circuit court judges from $160,688 to $182,060. It would also increase county judge salaries from $151,822 to $172,015. That amounts to an increase of about 13% over the current salary.
According to the sprinkle list, the raises will cost the state about $9.8 million. Of that, $8,460,629 million will come from recurring dollars in the budget’s general fund. Another $1.3 million will come from trust fund money.
Lawmakers spent big on pay raises this year, including a 5.4% across-the-board raise for state employees in the budget. Additionally, budget writers have raised the minimum wage for state workers to $15 an hour.
In all, salaries will increase more than $638 million, with $395 million funding the 5.4% across-the-board increase and $72.6 million going to increase the pay of all employees earning less than $15 per hour to get them to that level.
Lawmakers often withhold some money from the budgeting process until the end of Session. As Jason Garcia of Florida Trend explained, that money can be “used to sprinkle one last helping of hometown projects into the budget in order to get a budget deal done.”
This year’s sprinkle lists were released as it became clear Florida will have to extend its Session to finalize the budget, one of the Legislature’s fundamental duties. The budget is required to be completed and printed the days before the annual Legislative Session ends because of a required 72-hour “cooling off” period. Lawmakers missed a Tuesday deadline to finish the budget and end the Session by the planned Friday end date.
Sprinkle list items are not guaranteed and can still be subject to the Governor’s veto pen. But judicial raises would follow the Governor’s trend of budgeting bonuses. He’s previously included bonuses or raises for first responders and teachers in budgets.
