NYC lawmakers set to give themselves 18% pay hike, their first raise in a decade

New York City’s lawmakers are poised to get a hefty raise this summer.

The City Council is expected to approve legislation Thursday that would boost the salaries of city elected officials by 18.2%.

Moves by lawmakers to give themselves a raise are typically controversial. But many elected officials across the five boroughs noted they haven’t received a salary increase since 2016 and argued higher pay helps attract more qualified candidates.

The pay raises were recommended by a commission appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani earlier this year. The amount is intended to offset the increasing cost of living but still falls short of the 31% increase in inflation over the past decade, according to the commission’s final report.

The changes would affect salaries for mayor ($258,750 to $305,800), public advocate ($184,800 to $218,400), comptroller ($209,050 to $247,100), borough presidents ($179,200 to $211,800), councilmembers ($148,500 to $175,500), the Council speaker ($164,500 to $194,400) and district attorneys ($212,800 to $251,500).

Both Mamdani and Council Speaker Julie Menin said earlier this year they would not accept any salary increases during their current four-year terms.

The changes take effect 45 days after the legislation takes effect — and include retroactive pay to the start of this year.

The last time elected officials received a pay increase was in 2016, a year after a commission convened by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio during his first term in office.

The City Charter requires the mayor to convene a so-called Quadrennial Commission to review the salaries of city elected officials every four years, but that never happened during de Blasio’s second term or former Mayor Eric Adams’ time in office.

The new legislation would require the mayor to convene one of those commissions in the third year of their term rather than the first. Under the change, any pay hike would take effect after the following election when elected officials start a new term.

Grace Rauh, executive director of Citizens Union, which has supported the increase, said keeping city elected officials' salaries competitive helps attract better candidates and ensures elected officials are not only independently wealthy.

“ Competitive pay can serve as a deterrent against any potential corruption or self-dealing,” Rauh added.

Councilmember Ty Hankerson, who represents parts of Southeast Queens, said his current salary is too low to afford a home in his district. He said he faces mounting bills, including $30,000 in outstanding student loans and $600 a month for car insurance.

“My thought was years ago, ‘Hey, if I make six figures, maybe I'll be able to buy a home,’" said Hankerson, 31. “And when I finally got there, I realized it still felt impossible.”

Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer, who chairs the committee on government operations that’s set to vote on the legislation Thursday before it goes to the full Council, said she expected the raises to pass.

Brewer is a local government fixture who’s served as either a councilmember or the Manhattan borough president since 2002. She said many of her younger colleagues have a hard time affording to live in New York City on their current salaries.

“ I think there is a concern that if you don't have an increase in salary, that people who are already wealthy, Black, white, Latino, Asian, doesn't matter, will run for office and others may not,” Brewer said.

The increase is projected to cost taxpayers $2.6 million in fiscal year 2027, including back pay, and $1.7 million in subsequent years, according to a financial report prepared by the Council.

Opponents of the pay increase, like Republican City Councilmember Joann Ariola, said this is not the year for lawmakers to raise their own pay after they struggled to strike an 11th-hour budget deal.

“ If we have no money for public safety, we have no money to put extra cops on the street, we have no money to pay our EMS what they're worth, then how dare we say there is money to give ourselves raises?” Ariola said.

In Tompkins Square Park on Tuesday, Ann Roman, 75, was angry about the salary hikes, noting she faces threats to her federal benefits, including food stamps, Medicaid and Social Security.

While changes to those programs are being made at the federal level, she still resented local lawmakers taking more money as she is forced to get by on less.

“Why, if that's something that we work for,” Roman said, referring to the cuts she’s facing. “And now they want to raise their salary when they aren't even half the time where they're supposed to be doing what they're supposed to be doing.”

Outside the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning, Synead Cidney Nichols, 35, of Crown Heights, called the salary hike “insane.”

“I'm an educator, and I find that teachers are the most underpaid,” Nichols said.

She wants to see people in positions of power work harder to advocate for those struggling, and said she hasn’t seen anything close to an 18.2% salary increase in the last 10 years.

Walter Wuthmann contributed reporting to this story.