After 5 lengthy hours of heated and complicated redistricting drama, the Boston City Council abruptly modified course and gave itself pay raises.
The City Council overrode the mayor’s veto of its further pay hikes, however then amended them again down considerably on the finish of a very lengthy assembly on Wednesday.
Ultimately, the council authorized pay hikes from $103,500 now to $115,000 in 2024, then $120,000 in 2025 and $125,000 in 2026, and a bump within the mayor’s pay from $207,000 now to $250,000 in 2026.
This situation has taken a winding highway so far and took a sequence of votes Wednesday night to work out.
The course of started in August, when Mayor Michelle Wu proposed hikes to some metropolis officers, herself and the councilors. Under her proposal, they might have made $115,000 beginning in 2024 however not had additional scheduled raises, and she or he would have made twice that, as is typical in Boston.
But councilors wished extra. Government Operations Chair Ruthzee Louijeune finally amended it as much as $125,000 beginning in 2024, a transfer that, although some councilors expressed discomfort a couple of 21% hike when many lower-income metropolis workers don’t get that sort of leap, handed the physique unanimously. Other councilors truly had lobbied for even increased quantities, however Louijeune mentioned that quantity was a compromise that put it consistent with different comparable cities.
But Wu, citing a few of those self same issues, vetoed it, sending it and a refile of the unique proposal again to the council.
The Louijeune pulled the 2 payments out of committee on the finish of the lengthy council assembly this week. The veto override, which might’t be amended, wanted 9 of the 13 councilors to approve it, and it received precisely that, with simply Councilors Frank Baker, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy voting in opposition to.
Then on the second invoice, Louijeune proposed an modification to scale as much as that quantity by 2026 quite than simply leap as much as it come 2024; that modification and the ultimate invoice had been authorized by that very same 9-4 cut up.
The heated climax of the redistricting combat got here round 5:30 p.m. with closing passage of a brand new map. The council then handed the 2 salary-related dockets earlier than 6.
“we’ll be as aggressive if not more aggressive with fighting for salary increases for all of our city workers,” Louijeune insisted as she known as for a vote. on the dockets.
The metropolis councilors’ final pay hike was authorized in 2018. All pay raises have to enter impact after the subsequent election for a given place, per state ethics legal guidelines, so this present crop of metropolis councilors and Wu must win re-election earlier than they see additional cash.
The council and Wu have been at odds over a number of points this 12 months, and this was the primary time a majority of the members on what’s a deeply divided physique efficiently overrode her veto after the earlier two instances it held.
The 9-4 vote mirrored the identical breakdown as the sooner redistricting closing map had.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”