Fairfax (Map, News) - Magistrates in Fairfax County are urging the Board of Supervisors to increase their salaries, arguing the county’s comparatively lower pay supplement fuels high turnover and a lack of qualified applicants.

A key part of the Virginia court system, magistrates are responsible for issuing warrants and setting bail, among a host of other tasks. Individual counties are expected to augment the salaries magistrates receive from the state, which start at $38,583.

Fairfax County offers a 25 percent salary supplement, which magistrate Stan Severance says is not enough to retain employees because other Virginia counties offer larger amounts. The jobs, he said, call on them to work shifts at night and on holidays and weekends without extra compensation.

“In the past, we’ve been sort of a hiring and training ground, and then they’ve been led away by adjacent counties where [magistrates] were receiving a higher supplement,” Severance told The Examiner on Thursday.

In the last two years, the county has lost 12 magistrates. Only two of them, however, transferred to adjacent counties that pay better, according to a pay proposal included in this year’s General District Court budget request. Three left because they failed certification, and another quit during training. The rest moved due to family issues or retired.

Only a fraction of the 40 applicants who applied to fill those positions were qualified for the job, according to the documents.

Since then, the county has filled all but one vacancy, though the new hires require months of training. Of the 30 magistrates on staff, about half have five or fewer years experience.

Fairfax County District Court Clerk Nancy Lake called magistrate turnover a “tremendous problem.”

“It’s a very draining job, because of that 24-hour rotating schedule,” she said. “It’s pretty brutal.”

Severance is spearheading a push for a 50 percent county salary supplement that would go into place in a magistrate’s fourth year on the job.

But the proposal could have a grim outlook, at least for this year. It competes with numerous other requests for funding increases at a time when a flattened housing market has stagnated the county’s revenue streams.

wflook@dcexaminer.com