{"id":299297,"date":"2026-07-18T04:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T04:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/299297\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T04:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T04:44:10","slug":"council-pay-raise-is-sick-joke-on-working-people-of-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/299297\/","title":{"rendered":"Council pay raise is sick joke on working people of New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of the New York City Council, largely unemployable in any real job, voted Thursday to pay themselves more than US senators or most governors.<\/p>\n

The 18.2% hike will boost their pay to $175,000<\/a>, far more than almost any of them ever made before getting elected, or could ever hope to earn again.<\/p>\n

The Quadrennial Advisory Commission, which recommended the fat pay increases, is a useful tool for the council to pretend they aren\u2019t really voting themselves<\/a> a raise, just ratifying what the commission (a pack of friendly insiders) suggested.<\/p>\n

The city \u201clast enacted a salary increase for its elected officials in 2016,\u201d the QAC notes<\/a>, and the \u201ccost of living has skyrocketed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But today\u2019s council members weren\u2019t in office in 2016, and they ran for the job knowing what it paid \u2014 a big income increase for nearly all of them.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get real: About 40% of today\u2019s council members got their only significant professional experience as staffers for local or state politicians; this is just another step in what look to be lifelong careers in and around politics.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, this used to be considered a part-time job, until \u201creformers\u201d outlawed outside income in a bid to \u201cprofessionalize\u201d the council.<\/p>\n

That is: To reserve the office for professional politicians, excluding nearly all private-sector professionals.<\/p>\n

These tax-eaters have lived in the bubble world of municipal government for so long they have lost all sense of perspective.<\/p>\n

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Councilman Ty Hankerson (D-Jamaica), whose previous job was assistant to his predecessor Adrienne Adams, told Gothamist that his current pay of $148,500 is too low because of the many bills he must pay, and that even now it \u201cfeels impossible\u201d for him to afford to buy a house.<\/p>\n

Yet the median household income in Hankerson\u2019s district is $71,000; imagine how bad his constituents who work real jobs must feel for him.<\/p>\n

Maybe he should run a Go Fund Me so they can help him pay his car note.<\/p>\n

Adding to the insult here, the raise is retroactive to January, so each pol will get a fat check of 10 or 15 grand to compensate them for all the underpaid labor they\u2019ve been doing.<\/p>\n

The City Charter says the council can\u2019t give itself a raise: The hike shouldn\u2019t take effect until in the following term, giving voters the choice of letting their representatives enjoy the raise or not.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s bad enough that the council is packed with hacks.<\/p>\n

That they\u2019ll likely get away with raising their own salaries is simply obscene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the New York City Council, largely unemployable in any real job, voted Thursday to pay themselves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[301,858,304,60729,9,24,55,54,56,299,985],"class_list":["post-299297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-city-council","tag-congress","tag-editorial","tag-executive-compensation","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opinion","tag-taxpayers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299297","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=299297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}