Published: May 21, 2008 12:05 am            

Increase jurors pay, judge urges

EBENSBURG — With $9-a-day pay and a 17-cent mileage reimbursement, Cambria County’s summoned jurors often joke sarcastically, “Boy, we’re getting rich,” said Tom Chernisky, a county jury commissioner.

It’s a rate that went into effect in 1959, and was only slightly adjusted in 1980 when state lawmakers upped it to $25 a day after the third day of jury duty.

But few are paid the higher $25-a-day rate. Most people called for jury duty end up serving only a day of service – the day juries are picked. And few trials go beyond three days.

On Tuesday, the state House Subcommittee on Courts held a hearing in Harrisburg on whether the $9 should be increased.

The witnesses included Cambria County Judge Norman Krumenacker, who said that it’s time for an increase.

He testified as president of the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges.

“It is incumbent upon those who are involved in the administration of a fair and impartial judicial process to relieve – to the extent possible – the financial burden placed on those who answer the call (to jury duty),” he told the subcommittee.

He sympathized with jurors who must deal with “$4-a-gallon gasoline and ever-rising prices of food and other necessities.”

Although jury service may be an inconvenience in a person’s life, it’s an important civic duty in the administration of justice, Krumenacker said.

Some jurors express concern about losing a full day’s pay, which can have a huge impact on a family, the judge said. State law does not require employers to pay employees while they’re off for jury duty, he noted.

A few people – those who are self-employed or stay-at-home mothers or fathers who have to pay baby-sitters – complain about the financial hardship, Chernisky said.

Krumenacker suggested that the state could provide a dollar-for-dollar tax benefit for paying employees their full wages while on jury service.

Two House bills have been proposed for increased compensation:

n HB 601: The $9 would be increased to $40 for the first three days; the $25 a day thereafter would remain unchanged.

n HB 1356: The $9 would be dropped with compensation pegged to eight times the federal minimum wage. That would convert to $46.80 a day at the current federal minimum wage of $5.85 an hour. In addition, the mileage reimbursement would be adjusted to the amount recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, which now is 50.5 cents a mile.

Neither bill makes much of a change in the state reimbursement, which is 80 percent for trials lasting more than three days. Cambria had zero reimbursement on its 2007 jurors’ cost of $45,364. Somerset County received only $3,382 reimbursement on its cost of $27,341 in 2007.

Cambria President Commissioner P.J. Stevens and Somerset Commissioner Jim Marker, while agreeing that increased compensation would be desirable, said the state should pay the tab.

“It’s another unfunded state burden which is passed along to county property owners,” Marker said.

Stevens said that if there is increased pay without state reimbursement, it’s another “stress on our local budget, a continued strain on local taxpayers.”

        

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