Members of the New York City Council are setting the stage for giving themselves a raise — but Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Council Speaker Julie Menin say they’ll decline an increase in salary.
The decisions by the city’s top two elected officials followed an announcement they would convene a new commission to review the salaries of all city elected officials, including councilmembers. Legislation to fast-track the process is expected to be considered at a hearing Friday — an indication some members are eager to boost their annual salaries of $148,500.
Menin's and Mamdani’s positions, however, hint at the awkward politics of the pay raises as they pursue an affordability agenda.
“The mayor has committed to not taking a pay raise during his first term,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said.
Menin followed suit on Thursday.
“I do agree with the mayor's position. I also will not be [taking a salary increase] either,” she said. “We're putting forward this plan, that the councilmembers really had advocated for a cost-of-living adjustment that hadn't been done since 2016.”
The speaker is paid $164,500 a year. The mayor’s annual salary is $258,750.
The move to convene what is called a quadrennial commission comes as Mamdani warns of a $12 billion budget crisis he argues demands saving measures and state tax hikes. Menin said the Council has its own ideas for how to find budget savings, including ending the long-term use of no-bid contracts for emergencies and reducing health care costs for city workers.
At the same time, the City Council is leaning into the salary review process and moving to tighten up the timeline on the commission that could boost their salaries.
Deputy Council Speaker Nantasha Williams has sponsored legislation to add new deadlines for the commission. Her bill would give the mayor 15 days to appoint members to the commission after the measure is adopted, and 60 days for the commission to complete its analysis and submit a report to the mayor and Council for review.
A spokesperson for Williams said she was not available to comment ahead of the hearing.
According to the City Charter, the mayor is supposed to convene a commission every four years to review the salaries of all city elected officials and determine if any adjustments are needed based on changes in cost of living and workload.
Mayor Eric Adams skipped the commission process entirely, prompting councilmembers to propose legislation that would have increased their salaries to $172,500 in the waning days of their term last year.
Good-government groups criticized the Council for attempting to circumvent the process laid out in the Charter.
“This debate was never about whether elected officials deserve a raise, it was about how those decisions are made,” said Grace Rauh, head of the Citizens Union nonprofit. Her organization strongly opposed the end-of-session maneuver to raise Council salaries, arguing the city should stick to a 50-year precedent of salary increases determined by a commission.
Previous commissions have examined workload, cost of living, comparable cities and the demands of the job before making recommendations. The process is intended to protect elected officials from the perception of self-dealing.
Stephen Louis, counsel for the Center for New York City and State Law at New York Law School, said the mayor could appoint commission members who make a recommendation in line with his own position of not taking a salary increase.
“The fact that they're appointed doesn't necessarily automatically mean they're going to be raises,” Louis said, noting the final recommendations will still go before the Council, which can choose to accept or reject them.
Still, he praised Mamdani for getting the city back on a schedule of regularly reviewing the salaries.
“This is a good idea to get back on track with what was supposed to have been done over the years and, unfortunately, frequently was not done," Louis said.
