Every local City Council should do what Portsmouth’s and Hampton’s did recently.
Thanks to a new state law that amends the maximum amount cities can pay their local elected officials, these two cities nearly doubled the salary of their councilmembers from $23,000 to $43,000 and the mayors to $47,000 from $25,000. Now some citizens might object to such high raises at one time, but the fact is, the compensation, which hasn’t risen in a quarter century, has been too paltry for too long. The mayors alone should be earning over $52,000 if their renumeration for services rendered had just kept up with cost-of-living.
And speaking of renumeration, we forget that these men and women are “on” 24/7. As Portsmouth’s Vernon Tillage, who holds down a full-time job while also overseeing the city’s business, told the Pilot, “I can’t take the title of councilman off when I go to Wal-Mart. I can’t even take it off when I go to a restaurant with my family.”
It certainly took some political courage for both councils to take this action (Richmond’s raised theirs too), but there was scant opposition from the public, although it will be interesting to see if it becomes an election issue this fall. Let’s hope it doesn’t, which might lead other councils to increase salaries too. And for those skeptics who think this will lead to a regular ramp up of pay, the General Assembly stipulated that once this goes into effect (7/25), councils can only boost wages “by an inflation factor not to exceed five percent.”
Based on the constant public scrutiny of their performances, and the fact that factors beyond their control often dictate outcomes, I would not expect to see a regular rush to pad compensation. These adjustments were just way overdue.
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