The Metropolis Council is barreling forward with a invoice to present native elected officers pay raises, scheduling a listening to on it for later this month — at the same time as the 2 politicians with essentially the most say on the matter, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and incoming Council Speaker Julie Menin, stay tight-lipped on the place they stand.
Launched final week by Queens Councilwoman Nantasha Williams, the invoice would give five-digit raises to Council members, the mayor, the comptroller and the general public advocate in addition to town’s borough presidents and district attorneys. These officers haven’t acquired raises since 2016, so backers of Williams’ laws say wage bumps are overdue.
Nonetheless, the Council on Wednesday penciled in a listening to on the invoice for Dec. 16 within the chamber’s Governmental Operations Committee, data present.
Nonetheless, Wednesday’s scheduling transfer comes as Menin — who final week declared victory within the race to turn out to be the Council’s subsequent speaker — has shunned including her identify as a co-sponsor to the pay increase invoice, data present.
Menin’s choice as speaker nonetheless must be formalized with a vote by all the Council’s 51 members in January, however so long as she passes that course of, she is going to get the chamber’s prime spot — a perch that might give her decisive say over whether or not the pay increase invoice will even get a vote in 2026.
Menin declined to touch upon why she has saved her identify off the invoice.
Sources conversant in her pondering mentioned Menin is supportive of giving native elected officers taxpayer-funded raises and anticipated subsequent 12 months so as to add her identify behind an effort to implement them.
Nonetheless, the sources mentioned she has saved her identify off the present iteration of the invoice as a result of she has lingering authorized considerations about it being superior on this 12 months’s lame duck interval. The sources additionally mentioned Menin would like that, earlier than any official motion is taken, a fee be empaneled to check what kind of ranges the raises needs to be.
If handed by the Council, any pay increase invoice would wish approval from the mayor to right away turn out to be regulation. However Mamdani, who’s being sworn in as mayor on Jan. 1 after working a marketing campaign centered on making town extra reasonably priced, has shunned saying the place he stands on the pay increase invoice.
“I’m not worried about the hypotheticals at this time,” Mamdani instructed reporters Monday when requested whether or not he helps the invoice.
A rep for Mamdani, who will as mayor have the ability to veto payments handed by the Council, declined to remark additional Wednesday.
The pay increase matter is prone to turn out to be a headache for Mamdani it doesn’t matter what place he takes. He’s prone to anger Council members if he tries to dam it, however doubtlessly draw the ire of the general public if he helps it.
Below Williams’ invoice, Mamdani would get a mayoral wage of $300,500 per 12 months, up from the present $258,000. As speaker, Menin would underneath the invoice earn $191,000 yearly, up from the present $164,000, whereas different Council members would begin incomes $172,500, up from the present $148,000.
Below present regulation, the mayor is each 4 years purported to empanel a fee to check whether or not pay raises for elected officers are needed. However ex-Mayor Invoice de Blasio by no means convened one in 2020 as a result of pandemic, and outgoing Mayor Eric Adams skipped empaneling one in 2024 with out providing a motive.
Grace Rauh, govt director of the Residents Union, argued it’s nonetheless inappropriate for the Council to avoid the fee system. She instructed it’s higher for the following Council to move a invoice giving the speaker the ability to convene the fee after which act on suggestions offered by such a panel.
“The bar here shouldn’t be whether something meets the letter of the law in the Charter, it should be whether this is the right way of getting a pay raise, and the answer is it’s clearly not,” Rauh mentioned Wednesday night.
With Josephine Stratman
