An 18% City Council pay hike is a middle finger to NYC voters
It’s a move obscene on so many levels: Members of the City Council are looking to vote themselves a fat pay hike.
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Just days after they approved a gargantuan $126 billion city budget, they took up a measure to boost their salaries more than 18% retroactive to Jan. 1 — plus automatic 2% hikes every year thereafter.
The hikes would push members’ pay to $175,500, upper middle-class income territory and more than twice the city’s median income ($81,228).
So the move shows complete contempt for city voters, who the pols plainly think won’t notice, as well as for the City Charter, which sets out an entirely different procedure for upping their pay.
Shame on Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Speaker Julie Menin if they let this happen, rather than annoy the members angling for the windfall.
And shame on the supposed good-government groups currying favor by claiming a $27,000 increase will attract superior candidates.
Hah! The council awarded itself fat $30,000 raises in 2016 with no sign of improvement at all; the simple fact is that the job was never meant to be a good career move, but rather a public service that might interrupt a normal career.
Los Angeles and Chicago pay their councilmembers more — and those towns are now worse disasters than Gotham.
The City Charter requires the convening of a pay panel every four years — specifically during the third year of a mayoral administration — to prevent immediate conflicts of interest: By moving now, the council majority would be declaring themselves proud to line their own pockets.
Private-sector workers don’t get automatic cost-of-living adjustments, nor do regular city workers: What entitles the council members to them, other than “we think we can get away with it”?
Mamdani should order his City Charter Commission to fix this loophole by asking city voters to explicitly ban this self-dealing.
And if Menin means to be seen as a real leader, she can’t just announce she won’t take the raise: She needs to refuse to allow a floor vote on this outrage.
If neither of them steps up, they’re declaring that they, too, hold regular New Yorkers in complete contempt.
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