As reported yesterday by the Sun’s Julie Scharper, City Hall officials are reviewing automatic pay raises slated to be given to them in the upcoming fiscal year, raises which generated some controversy previously when then-mayor Sheila Dixon initially refused to donate her raise to charity, as others alternatively did at the time (“City Hall pay raises up for review today,” March 22, 2010).
Most or all of the officials receiving the highest raises have already vowed to donate them or return them to the general fund, but what sort of slips under the radar here is despite the fact that city officials may be returning the money, their raises are still in effect – it’s not a pay freeze, as many other city employees are facing currently and have faced in the past. So while your friend at central booking may be stuck making 21k for the next two years, the mayor’s base salary continues to rise and so does her paycheck. So in another two years when your friend at central booking finally gets that raise to a whopping 22k, the mayor will have already received three raises, she just won’t be obligated by politics to return the most current one.
Which begs the question – if city officials know this, what is the point of “giving up” the raise in the first place, while their base salary is still increasing? And even more incredulously, why did Dixon refuse to donate hers at first if she knew she’d still be getting her money (at some point)? Currently the raises are automatically generated by law at 2.5% annually and cannot be rescinded by the council, so technically speaking, it’s out of their hands. But why isn’t a voluntary pay freeze an option, much like the voluntary furlough days they seem so fond of reminding everyone they’ve taken?
Well there’s one possibility, one niggling little detail that might explain such an outcome. A single word with two syllables, pension! It’s a reality we’re all too familiar with currently that elected officials – included disgraced ones forced out of office – receive a pension determined by their base salary once they retire. So while virtually every other city employee is forced to take pay freezes and their pension plans are in the crosshairs, city officials get their comfy bump to base salary while maintaining their pension increase. Hey, not too shabby a tradeoff if you ask me.
And to tie it all together, doesn’t that make Dixon’s initial refusal to give up her raise even more incredulous?