Plan A for a stealth City Council \u201craise our own pay\u201d gambit failed, thanks to the clear language of the City Charter \u2014 so it\u2019s on to Plan B, which has the added \u201cadvantage\u201d of sandbagging the new mayor in his first week in office.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Nantasha Williams<\/a> (D-Queens) wanted the council to vote itself a 16% salary increase this week, to take effect in January \u2014 and had 30 co-sponsors lined up, a solid majority on the 51-member council.<\/p>\n Too bad the city constitution outright bans the council voting itself more income \u201cbetween the general election day and the 31st day of December\u201d in any year where its members are all up for election.<\/p>\n Her fallback: Have council committees clear the legislation now<\/a>, so the full body can rush it through come January, and so force then-Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> to either sign it or start his term at war with the city\u2019s legislature.<\/p>\n The plan is to boost members\u2019 pay from an already-absurd $148,500 to a princely $172,500; it would also hike pay for the mayor, city comptroller, public advocate and five borough presidents a similar 16%.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n Maybe Williams hopes that will entice Mamdani to go along?<\/p>\n Then again, his voters probably didn\u2019t elect him so he could make the city more \u201caffordable\u201d for the politicians who run it.<\/p>\n Council members gripe that their pay hasn\u2019t been raised since 2016, as Mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams both ignored the law that orders the mayor to call a Quadrennial Commission on Compensation Levels to consider pay hikes every four years.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Yet that 2016 hike was obscene: up $36,000 (from $112,500), as the council upped what the commission had recommended by 10 grand.<\/p>\n Frankly, we doubt most council members could find another job that pays them as much as the current $148k, let alone $36,000 above that; otherwise, they\u2019d be in those jobs. <\/p>\n Potential good news: Even Plan B may fail.<\/p>\n The City Charter also prohibits the adoption of local laws \u201cinconsistent with the provisions\u201d of the city\u2019s governing laws, which sounds like it precludes council action except in response to Quadrennial Commission recommendations \u2014 which would mean no hike before 2030.<\/p>\n Right after he takes the oath of office, the new mayor should cite his fealty to the letter and spirit of the Charter and vow to veto the pay hike: It\u2019s the honorable response to Williams\u2019 bid to blackmail him before he can even move into Gracie Mansion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plan A for a stealth City Council \u201craise our own pay\u201d gambit failed, thanks to the clear language…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12390,301,304,9,56,63,65,64,299,29062,16999,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-52445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-charter","9":"tag-city-council","10":"tag-editorial","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-raises","18":"tag-salaries","19":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52445","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=52445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}