A retired east Arkansas judge won’t be allowed to draw his benefits during an appointed one-year return to the bench, a requirement that the jurist said he was unaware of when he accepted the job.
Judge Harvey Yates was appointed last week to fill a circuit court vacancy in Helena-West Helena in the 1stJudicial District.
State officials said he isn’t allowed to receive both a judicial salary (more than $136,000) and his more than $100,000-a-year retirement benefit.
And when asked if he would keep the appointment under such conditions, Yates said he has some thinking to do.
“I just have to look at theoverall thing and see what the overall picture is,” Yates said Tuesday. “We’ll see what comes down the pike.”
Yates didn’t return a call seeking further comment Wednesday.
Yates, 62, served from 1982 through 2008 on the same judicial circuit to which Gov. Mike Beebe has appointed him.
Yates replaces L.T. Simes,whom the Arkansas Supreme Court suspended last month without pay for the remainder of his term after a judicial-discipline panel found that he worked as an attorney while serving on the bench.
Yates, in considering his situation, pointed out that his return to the bench means he’ll lose income because he must also drop his private mediation and arbitrationpractice. He said giving up retirement pay, though only for the duration of his appointed term, might be too much given the increased workload he’ll see after nearly two years of retirement.
When announcing his appointment on Dec. 23, the governor’s office said Yates had a “distinguished career and showed interest” in theone-year assignment. State law does not allow the appointee to run for election to the seat in 2010. Yates added Tuesday that the post requires the kind of experience he has but is otherwise rare in his six-county Arkansas Delta district.
Given his years of service and the terms under which he said he retired, Yates qualifies for more than $105,000 in yearly retirement pay. Circuit judge salaries are $136,257 a year and could go up in July when the next state budget year begins.
Yates said he hadn’t considered the pay issue until it was raised by a reporter earlier this week.
“I don’t know,” said Yates, whose appointment is scheduled to end Dec. 31, 2010. “I just have to wait and see what happens.”
Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said the governor’s office hadn’t given the court job’s salary-pension question thought, either. “Our role is to fill the vacancy,” he said, deferring compensation questions to the Administrative Office of the Courts. “That’s all their ballpark.”
J.D. Gingerich, director of that office, said an appointed judge who had previously retired “will give up his retirement benefit during the time of his service. And then hewill resume receiving those retirement benefits once he re-retires.”
Gingerich based that on a provision of state law, Arkansas Code Annotated 24-8-101, that says: “Any judge or justice ... who is receiving retirement benefits .... [and] is elected or appointed to any judicial office in this state, and who foregoes receipt of retirement benefits while serving in the judicial office shall be entitled to resume receiving his or her previous retirement benefits upon termination” of the appointment.
Judicial retirement benefits are handled by the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System. System Deputy Director Michele Williams reiterated that retired judges are not allowed to receive their benefits while serving on the bench again.
“This is not the first time this has happened,” she said, adding that providing an exact number of instances would require extensive research.
She said that typically the retirement system makes such benefit changes at the notice of the retiree. Williams declined to say whether Yates had contacted her office, and Yates said Tuesday that he had made no calls to anyone on the matter.
But, Williams added: “If we were aware of them assuming a position, then we would have to contact them.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/31/2009