{"id":169609,"date":"2026-03-20T20:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/169609\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T20:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:48:13","slug":"mamdanis-first-100-days-nyc-elected-officials-move-closer-to-possible-pay-raise-after-mayor-appoints-salary-commission-members","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/169609\/","title":{"rendered":"MAMDANI\u2019S FIRST 100 DAYS: NYC elected officials move closer to possible pay raise after Mayor appoints salary commission members"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, March 20, marked the 79th day of Zohran Mamdani\u2019s term as mayor.\u00a0amNewYork is following Mamdani around his first 100 days in office.<\/a>\u00a0We are closely tracking his progress on fulfilling campaign promises, appointing key leaders to government posts, and managing the city\u2019s finances. Here\u2019s a summary of what the mayor did.<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> has appointed three members to a commission that will review pay for New York City elected officials, after nearly a decade without raises and after lawmakers last year pursued salary hikes through legislation instead.<\/p>\n

Carl Weisbrod, a former city planning official and founding president of the city\u2019s Economic Development Corporation, will chair the Quadrennial Advisory Commission. The other members are Dr. Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, a former deputy mayor for health and human services, and Larian Angelo, a former first deputy director at the Mayor\u2019s Office of Management and Budget and former New York City Council finance director.<\/p>\n

The appointments complete a commission that Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced on Jan. 23 as an alternative to proposed legislation that would have automatically increased compensation for elected officials. The panel is expected to review salaries for City Council members, citywide elected officials and district attorneys and issue recommendations for consideration by the mayor and speaker. <\/p>\n

Any pay changes would still require City Council approval.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cCarl, Lilliam and Larian have each spent their careers serving this city with integrity. I am confident they will approach this responsibility with the seriousness and independence it demands, and I look forward to carefully reviewing their recommendations,\u201d said Mamdani, who has previously said he would not take a pay increase. Menin has agreed to do the same.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Quadrennial Commission plays an essential role in ensuring that any compensation decisions are made independently and transparently,\u201d Menin said in a statement welcoming the appointments.<\/p>\n

The move comes after years without a charter-mandated review of elected officials\u2019 salaries. The last such commission was convened in 2015, and the last full review took place in 2016.<\/p>\n

That lapse became more politically charged last year, when the City Council considered legislation to raise pay for its members and other top officials. Under that proposal, City Council members, the mayor, the public advocate, borough presidents and the comptroller would have received 16% raises, while district attorneys would have gotten a 6% increase.<\/p>\n

For Council members, that would have meant a raise from $148,500 to $172,500 \u2014 their first increase since 2016. The council members said the proposed figure reflected the rising cost of living, the growing demands of the job, and salary increases in the private sector, nonprofit world, and among elected officials in comparable cities such as Chicago.<\/p>\n

Discussing the legislation in December, government watchdog groups, including Citizens Union and Common Cause, said they were not opposed to raises themselves but criticized the Council\u2019s attempt to move them through legislation rather than an independent commission.<\/p>\n

At a hearing on the proposal,<\/a> Citizens Union Executive Director Grace Rauh said the approach broke with longstanding city practice. She said the City Charter requires the mayor to convene an independent commission every four years to study and make recommendations on elected officials\u2019 salaries \u2014 something Mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams both failed to do.<\/p>\n

Rauh also argued that moving the legislation during the lame-duck period between Election Day and Jan. 1 risked undermining public trust and could invite legal challenges. As that debate continued, the Council moved to formalize a timeline for future reviews.<\/p>\n

On March 10, the Council approved Introduction 502-B, introduced by Deputy Speaker Nantasha M. Williams, which would require the mayor to convene a quadrennial commission in 2026, then between Jan. 1 and Jan. 15 of 2030, and every four years after that.<\/p>\n

Under the bill, each commission would have 75 days from the date of its convening to make recommendations on compensation for city elected officials and to send them to both the mayor and the Council. The mayor could approve, disapprove, or modify those recommendations before transmitting them to the Council, but would not be required to do so. The Council would retain the authority to alter compensation levels before adoption.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s vote advances the Charter-outlined process for reviewing elected official compensation,\u201d Williams said after the bill passed. \u201cThe last full review took place in 2016, and this legislation provides the structure for the Council to revisit that question in a clear and transparent way.\u201d<\/p>\n

New commissioner: Mamdani nabs council\u2019s finance boss \u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier on Friday, Hizzoner appointed Richard Lee as commissioner of the New York City Department of Finance, successfully luring away the City Council\u2019s top budget negotiator during a fraught budget season.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s appointment lands in the middle of tense negotiations between the mayor and Speaker Julie Menin over a preliminary budget clouded by a major fiscal gap. As head of the Council\u2019s Finance Division, Lee had been central to the body\u2019s budget strategy even as Mamdani defended a spending plan built around reserve drawdowns, a proposed property tax hike, and hoped-for help from Albany.<\/p>\n

The Council wasted little time replacing Lee. On March 19, Speaker Julie Menin appointed Nathan Toth as finance director, handing budget strategy, negotiations, and planning to a veteran city fiscal official who previously spent 15 years in the Council\u2019s Finance Division before leaving for the Department of Design and Construction.<\/p>\n

The hiring of Lee comes as Mamdani faces growing scrutiny over his approach to closing the city\u2019s budget hole<\/a>. The mayor has argued that Albany should do more to help, including by raising taxes on wealthy New Yorkers and large corporations, and recalibrating how much money the city receives from the state.<\/p>\n

That strategy has drawn skepticism from several directions. Moody\u2019s recently revised the city\u2019s outlook to negative, citing persistent budget gaps, a move Mamdani dismissed as premature. Council leaders have also pushed back on his reliance on reserves, deepening the divide between City Hall and the speaker\u2019s office as negotiations intensify.<\/p>\n

Prior to his role with the council\u2019s financial division, Lee was budget director for the Queens borough president and previously worked in budget and legislative affairs for then-Council Member Leroy Comrie.<\/p>\n

In announcing the appointment, Mamdani pointed to Lee\u2019s experience with the city budget at a time when New York is facing mounting fiscal pressure.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cHis command of the City\u2019s budgeting process makes him uniquely qualified to lead the Agency and ensure that our City continues meeting New Yorkers\u2019 needs,\u201d said Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Lee called the appointment an honor and said he sees the job as part of a broader fight over affordability, and said the city\u2019s financial system should work for working-class New Yorkers, immigrants, small businesses, and outer-borough communities.<\/p>\n

Lee replaces Jeffrey Shear, who had served as acting commissioner since Jan. 1 after previously holding the department\u2019s number two post as first deputy commissioner.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friday, March 20, marked the 79th day of Zohran Mamdani\u2019s term as mayor.\u00a0amNewYork is following Mamdani around his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[301,69500,1445,44590,9,56,63,65,64,69501,613],"class_list":["post-169609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-city-council","tag-finance-commissioner","tag-mamdani","tag-mamdani-first-100-days","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-pay-rise","tag-pm-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}