Metro

State’s top judge is a junket justice

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ALBANY — Order in the resort!

New York’s chief judge has also become the state’s top judicial junketeer, spending nearly $8,500 in taxpayer funds to visit such alluring out-of-state locales as the Colorado Rockies and the Virgin Islands, The Post has learned.

Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman has traveled outside the Empire State on taxpayer-funded junkets no fewer than eight times since his appointment two years ago, staying at some of the most elegant hotels in America, according to a Post review of court expense records.

Lippman’s destinations included the luxurious Frenchmen’s Reef in tropical St. Thomas, where the chief judge stayed for four nights last February as most New Yorkers shivered through 30-degree temperatures.

The posh Caribbean excursion, like most of Lippman’s state-subsidized sojourns, were made in his capacity as a director for the national Conference of Chief Justices.

That trip alone cost $1,654, including $1,306 in lodging.

The 65-year-old jurist, whom then-Gov. David Paterson appointed in 2009 to lead the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, spent $4,804 over the past two summers attending similar conferences in Vail, Colo., and Santa Fe, NM.

Court spending has come under greater scrutiny since The Post revealed last week that the high court plowed ahead with — and even attempted to embellish — a multimillion-dollar suite of private apartments for itself in Albany despite the state’s historic financial crisis.

In total, Lippman spent just under $26,000 on travel since 2009, including routine trips to Albany to preside over court sessions.

That represented about a fifth of the $130,000 spent on travel during his tenure by the seven-member Court of Appeals.

The associate judges appear to travel out of state rarely, although Judge Victoria Graffeo has spent $1,381 attending legal conferences in Montreal and Austin, Texas.

Court spokesman Gary Spencer defended the junkets and said Lippman doesn’t pick the location for each conference.

“It allows all these judges running their own court systems to share ideas so each state doesn’t have to work through these problems by themselves in a vacuum,” Spencer said. “If it leads to improvements in operations of the New York state court system, it would probably be money well spent.”

Lippman, who makes $156,000 a year, has visited Washington five times, spending a total of $2,030, to lobby members of Congress, visit Justice Department officials and participate in conferences.

He last visited Washington in November to attend the CCJ’s annual Rehnquist Awards, where he won top honors in 2008.

Earlier, Gov. Cuomo blasted Lippman’s Office of Court Administration for refusing to cut its ballooning $2.6 billion budget in the face of a $10 billion statewide deficit.