Syracuse councilors to vote on pay raises for themselves, other elected offices

Syracuse, N.Y. — Holders of the city’s four elected offices may soon be getting bigger paychecks.

Syracuse Common Council President Helen Hudson and Councilor Pat Hogan this week introduced legislation to increase salaries for common councilors, the council president, city auditor and mayor. The proposal comes after the expiration of a series of annual raises approved at the end of 2019.

Under the proposal, which the council could vote on at its Feb. 5 meeting, the biggest pay increase would go to the mayor, who would receive a $150,000 salary, up from $130,000.

The salary for council president, who is the non-voting leader of the legislative body, would go from $35,020 to $38,000, while the nine voting councilors’ pay would climb to $35,000 from $31,836. The auditor’s salary would jump from $66,693 to $68,000.

The proposed law was introduced at Wednesday’s council study session. No councilors spoke publicly about the measure.

After the meeting, Hogan, who is the council’s president pro tempore, said the proposed raises would keep the pay levels of elected seats from becoming a hindrance to running for office.

“Over the years I’ve noticed that the pool of people who can run for city council is demographically fairly narrow because the pay isn’t conducive to where somebody can support a family,” Hogan said. “We want to widen the pool.”

Hogan said the Mayor Ben Walsh’s administration included elected offices in a comprehensive salary study it conducted last year for non-union city staff. That report lead to a combined $1.67 million in raises for city workers, but only the council can adjust pay for elected positions so those positions were left alone.

That study assessed comparable positions in the public and private sectors nationwide, and found the midpoint salary for a city councilor was $103,000. It was $94,704 for a city auditor, and for a mayor, it was $182,900.

Pay in upstate New York’s bigger cities is not at those levels, however. In the city of Buffalo, the mayor is paid $158,500 while councilors earn $75,000. Albany’s mayoral salary is $143,649 but its councilor pay is just $21,982. Hogan said the councilors also felt they should be closer in pay to the $37,619 that Onondaga County legislators make.

“We also want to be commensurate with other elected bodies,” he said, noting that the total impact for the council raises is an extra $30,000 in a $350 million budget.

When the council raised salaries at the end of 2019, it was the first increase in 16 years. Walsh vetoed those raises, but the council overrode the veto.

This time, Walsh supports the legislation. He noted that in his veto message four years ago, he said the raises should be addressed through the budget process and only after a salary study was conducted.

“This time, both of those issues were addressed,” he said.

The salary legislation in 2019 also included 2% annual raises for three years, except for the mayor. The new law does not include raises beyond what would go into effect this year.

Hogan and Walsh both acknowledged that the raises may not be politically popular.

“It’s always going to be awkward when you have authority over your salary, but that’s how the process was set up,” Walsh said.

City reporter Jeremy Boyer can be reached at jboyer@syracuse.com, (315) 657-5673, Twitter or Facebook.