Greetings friends! I shared an email with you all detailing the accomplishments we have made in the first six months of the 2021 calendar year and I am proud of the work of this board has done on your behalf.
Raises - that's right - those 5% raises should be hitting your paycheck starting in July. We are also guaranteed another 5% next July but of course, we will work with the Supreme Court and OJA to see if we can persuade the legislators to increase that amount beyond the 5%. As you know, we had a salary survey completed in 2018 that reported our magistrate judges were 38% behind similarly situated magistrates in other states. We have made a request for another salary survey to be completed and for those salary surveys to be completed on a regular basis.
Taxes - as you know we discovered in 2020 that our association had not filed taxes since its creation and further, that we were doing business under a fraudulent employee identification number. Judge Gilligan, along with the Washburn Tax Clinic, worked diligently to correct this issue. At this time we are in good standing with the State of Kansas but still need to resolve the issue of back taxes and penalties with the Federal Government. Your board members participated in a best practices webinar with the Washburn Law Clinic teaching us better business practices as board members of an association like ours. We adopted new Articles of Incorporation changing our not-for-profit status. We completed the revision of our bylaws and have submitted them to our membership for approval. Voting is open between now and July 9th - the day of our virtual board meeting (no actual board meeting will take place - it is just the last day for voting). I am sure Judge Gilligan never in a million years imagined what he agreed to when he accepted our nomination for Treasurer of our association. A huge thank you to both Judge Gilligan and the Washburn Tax Clinic.
Things to start thinking about - we lost two members of the board this spring. Judge Shannon Rush resigned and took a job with the Kansas Attorney General's Office. Judge Marty Clark retired and is living the good life away from the craziness. We have been unable to fill those vacancies due to the adoption of the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws and will do so as soon as the tax issues are resolved.
For the first time since I have been on the Board, we have met monthly. Chief Justice Luckert and Shawn Jurgensen attend our meetings and provide us updates and answer questions every month. We had more members involved in the lobbying then every before thanks to zoom. Legislative hearings were live streamed which reduced the number of trips to Topeka we needed to make. It has been a great year.
I hope you will start thinking about how you want to get involved in your association. Elections will be held in October at our meeting here in Overland Park, Kansas. I can tell you that being a part of this board has increased my knowledge and understanding of the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government in Kansas and I created, and continue to create, so many wonderful friendships with my colleagues that would never have happened but for my involvement on your board. There will be openings on the board but if you would like something a little less time consuming you might consider a committee position on the legislative, education, or membership/hospitality committees.
Hope you are all well and happy summer!
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