Clockwise from top left: Nasra Wehelie, Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Isadore Knox, Bill Tishler, Charles Myadze, and Amani Latimer Burris.
The proposal to raise city council pay failed due to 'no' votes from, clockwise from top left, Alds. Nasra Wehelie, Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Isadore Knox, Bill Tishler and Charles Myadze. Amani Latimer Burris abstained.
They did the right thing, but just barely.
Last week the Madison City Council rejected a proposal to give themselves a 60% pay increase, but by only one vote. The resolution to increase council pay from $15,000 to $24,218 required 15 votes from the 20-member council and it came up just short. Attempts to increase their pay by lesser amounts also failed.
Credit Alds. Nasra Wehelie, Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Isadore Knox, Charles Myadze and Bill Tishler for voting no. Ald. Amani Latimer Burris abstained.
This was an awful time to even consider a pay increase of any size, never mind a 60% jump. When the city faces a massive deficit, perhaps as high as $75 million, in future years, what kind of message does this send to the rest of city government? How can the council ask for belt tightening anywhere else and do it with a straight face?
It’s true that the council hasn’t had an increase in awhile, but one measure of whether or not the compensation is adequate is a simple market test. How many people are being attracted to run for a council seat? In last year’s council elections, 14 of the 20 seats had more than one candidate. For local races that’s pretty good. Each of the two Madison school board seats that are up this spring have only one candidate and there are only 10 races out of 37 Dane County Board seats on that same ballot.
And even in Congress, the Cook Political Report rates only 45 of 435 House seats as being a toss up or only leaning one way or the other. In other words, the modestly compensated Madison city council had races for 70% of its seats while right now Congress, with its comfortable salary of $174,000 a year, has little more than 10% of its seats truly up for grabs.
The stated reason for the big pay increase was that it would somehow attract candidates with low incomes. That seems highly doubtful because $24,000 is no more a family-supporting income than is $15,000. The Legislature has a higher salary at over $57,000 and I don’t think you’ll find many senators or representatives who were living below the poverty line just before they got elected.
This proposal springs from a 2019 report of the Task Force on Government Structure. That report contains other ideas like reducing the size of the council, making the positions full-time and lengthening the terms from two to four years. All of those ideas went down in flames in advisory referendums a few years ago, though the voters did back term limits, something the council has not acted on.
While fair compensation for an important and sometimes demanding job should be a goal, we should not want to make the council into a plum assignment. Right now pretty much everybody who steps up to run does so for the right reasons. They’re passionate about serving their community. They don’t do it for the pay and the perks. Let’s keep it that way.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
