Pay raises for elected public officials are almost always received as well as Granny\u2019s fruitcake at Christmas.<\/p>\n
Imagine Lurch, with his sigh and long-suffering look, and you\u2019ll understand the negative baseline sentiment.<\/p>\n
Much\u00a0of it likely is rooted in cynicism. Voters dislike the appearance of insiders voting themselves a pay raise or a bonus.<\/p>\n
Well, in the city of Fort Worth, the mayor and City Council don\u2019t have that luxury. The\u00a0voters\u00a0decide if their elected city officials will get a raise or not through a charter amendment election.<\/p>\n
Voters have twice rejected charter amendments to raise the pay of the Fort Worth mayor and City Council in the past 10 years, though the losing margins shrunk markedly between the elections in 2016 and 2022.<\/p>\n
All indications suggest that a proposal to increase City Council pay will once again go before voters in May. Staff and city leaders will continue to study the matter after the new year.<\/p>\n
Voters in the recent past simply haven\u2019t connected higher pay with better governance. Moreover, Fort Worth\u2019s civic DNA \u2014 written into the 1924 reform charter \u2014 treats council service as stewardship, not employment. A raise feels like money out with no public benefit in. And until that perception changes, the answer at the ballot box will likely stay the same.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth lags way behind its Texas peers in mayor and council pay. Through an election in 2006, the City Council is paid $25,000 each year. The mayor is pulling down $29,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Dallas\u2019 mayor and council are both paid $60,000 a year. Voters there last year turned down a charter amendment that would increase the mayor\u2019s pay to $110,000 and the council\u2019s to $90,000. San Antonio\u2019s mayor makes $61,725, while the council earns more than $45,000.<\/p>\n
The Austin City Council gave itself a nice raise in 2023, to more than $116,000 for council members and more than $134,000, a 40% increase in pay from 2022 to 2023, according to reports.<\/p>\n
Houston is the one exception among the big cities where the mayor is significantly stronger than in the classic council-manager cities. Houston is technically a \u201cstrong mayor\u2013council\u201d hybrid, but it still employs an appointed city administrator and extensive professional management functions. Mayor John Whitmire earns more than $236,000 a year. Councilmembers are paid $62,983.<\/p>\n
The failed 2022 measure in Fort Worth would have tied pay to one-half of the average salary of department and assistant department directors. Numbers at the time translated to roughly $99,000 for the mayor and $76,000 for council members. Those figures would be higher today if the same indexing formula were used. Staff also suggested the possibility of adopting a fixed base salary with an annual adjustment mechanism, indexing pay to an external benchmark such as Tarrant County median household income or allowing the council to set salaries by ordinance but with a defined cap, as the city of Austin does.<\/p>\n
Staff also recommended the possibility of adding term limits to the charter or staggering terms. Terms limits are currently inherent in the City Council because few, if any, want to work and sacrifice that long for so little a paycheck.<\/p>\n
Do the mayor and members of the Fort Worth City Council need pay raises? Yes. This is a part-time job with full-time hours.<\/p>\n
Will the voters give them one? Probably not.<\/p>\n
Along with the city being the fastest-growing big city in the U.S. comes more complex governing issues and a much more demanding workload for council members. However, studies show that increased city size and job complexity rarely increases voters\u2019 willingness to approve raises.<\/p>\n
When Fort Worth adopted its current council-manager form of government in 1924, proponents argued that the city needed a more professional, nonpolitical, and coordinated system of administration.<\/p>\n
The idea of a professional at the helm of the city was part of a reform era trend sweeping the country. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The council-manager format was one that separated policymaking from day-to-day operations, curbed waste and patronage, and placed the city\u2019s business in the hands of a trained executive rather than politicians chosen \u201cat random\u201d for offices requiring technical skill.<\/p>\n
The manager plan, unlike the charter of 1909, they believed, would deliver efficiency, fiscal stability, accountability, and predictability that the commission form had failed to provide.<\/p>\n
And then there was this, said the Citizens Municipal League: The elected City Council, the representative democracy of the city, serve for nominal salaries \u2014 or none at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey give time to direct city affairs through the city manager and are left free to continue private careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seemingly since that day, Fort Worth, today a city of more than 1 million but then a city\u00a0of about 120,000, has maintained a civic tradition reinforcing the idea that public service should be undertaken for the love of the city \u2014 something akin to serving on the church council.<\/p>\n
In fact, it was noted that the charter\u2019s writers \u2014 the commission of 35 was led by Van Zandt Jarvis and included K.M. Van Zandt, John P. King, John Laneri, and Ben E. Keith \u2014 served without any compensation.<\/p>\n
They also clearly wanted to squeeze out career politicians. Whatever the cause and effect, it has seemed to do so. Almost all who have served on the council, just simply left public service after their terms. Only Kay Granger left for a long career in Congress. Former Mayor Hugh Parmer and Wendy Davis followed council service with careers in the Texas state Senate. Former Mayor Woodie Woods took a stab at the state Senate but lost, and Jim Bradshaw had two notable knock-down, drag out runs for the U.S. House of Representatives against Majority Leader Jim Wright and Tom Vandergriff in 1980 and 1982. Mike Moncrief had a long career in politics before he closed it as mayor of Fort Worth.<\/p>\n
There is an assumption that better pay would attract a broader pool of candidates that stretch across socioeconomic sectors, but a\u00a0study by Nicholas Carnes of Duke University and Eric R. Hansen of University of North Carolina<\/a>disputes the conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n