LETTER: Judge got it right on Settelmeyer appointment

I typically side with the Review-Journal’s editorials, but I will have to make an exception with Wednesday’s opinion opposing District Court Judge James Wilson’s decision about the state hiring of conservation director James Settelmeyer so soon after he left the Legislature. The judge held that this did not violate the “emoluments” clause of the state constitution whereby a lawmaker must wait a certain period of time before taking over a position for which the Legislature recently approved a salary increase.

An “emolument” to a salary structure would be in the form of a complete revision whereby government salaries for a particular occupation might be adjusted to conform to their counterparts in private industry. But a simple cost-of-living allowance is routinely given to many employees automatically every year. The COLAs are not an emolument and do not change the structure of salaries. They simply attempt to keep employees in the same economic position they have been from year to year. This is a simple issue of semantics, not politics.