Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The Troup County Board of Commissioners has approved a salary adjustment increase for the part-time magistrate judge due to increased hours needed to work to fulfill the position.

On Tuesday, Judge Vickie Sue McWaters asked the commissioners to approve a budget amendment to accommodate the part-time magistrate judge salary adjustment for part-time Magistrate Judge James Baker.

The request was to increase his salary from $22,673.37 per year to $48,294.61 per year based on an increase in number of hours worked from 13 hours per week to 25 per week.

Judge McWaters said the cases that are coming through magistrate court have been growing exponentially, especially since COVID.

“We are growing exponentially. I have an associate magistrate who is constantly working and hadn’t been a good advocate for his own interests for the last several years in terms of asking for pay commensurate with what he does,” McWaters said, explaining that Judge Baker hasn’t asked for a raise even though the work he is doing has doubled.

“We’re a busy county in terms of the amount of cases we get in cases that are served. People forget that we are more than small claims. We handle every criminal complaint that comes through this county. All the warrants are signed either by me or by him. It all starts with us, the warrants, all of it, he’s on call at 6:30 a.m. every morning,” McWaters said.

Baker explained that he has to get up that early because it’s when police officers are ending their shifts and they have to get him to sign their warrants to hold people in jail before they get off. He said for emergency warrants for murders they will typically wake up during the middle of the night but for most cases, they wait until the end of their shifts at 7 a.m.

“The $21,000 a year for what he does is just it’s too low. It’s absolutely too low,” McWaters said. “When we look at his hours, what he’s paid is woefully a little amount of money, and we’re asking to amend our budget to allow him to be paid what he’s worth.”

Baker is currently paid what is required under Georgia law but it is based upon an hourly rate and he is currently working far more hours than what he is being paid for due to the increased caseload.

“[I’m asking for pay] which is commensurate with what I’ve been doing for the past 16 years. Judge McWaters is absolutely correct. I was not willing to come to the county and rock the boat and suggest that I be honest and truthful with the amount hours that I was putting in towards the job but this job takes time,” Baker said.

Judge Baker explained that not only are there more cases coming through now that the court system is catching up from COVID, evictions are increasing.

McWaters said they were doing about 18 eviction hearings per week last year. Now they are doing over 30. All of the civil hearings are held on Fridays, so that’s a tremendous amount of hearings in one day, she said.

Baker explained that Troup County is not unique in this issue. Court cases are ramping up across the state but Troup has fewer judges. Carroll County, which is similar to Troup in size, has a full-time magistrate judge and four part-time judges. Troup only has a full-time magistrate (McWaters) and one part-time magistrate (Baker).

County Manager Eric Mosley said the salary increase will be accommodated due to increased revenues generated from the courts due to the higher caseload.

The Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the part-time magistrate court salary adjustment.