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The New York City Council is poised to ring in 2026 by giving itself a meaty pay raise, hiking the salary for rank-and-file members from $148,500 to $172,500.
But wait, there’s more: That pay is the basis for the taxpayer-guaranteed, state-tax-exempt pension most council members get after they leave.
And that’s on top of the city-issued, zero-premium, zero-deductible health-insurance coverage that council members — and their dependents — receive, often into retirement.
The term “gold-plated” doesn’t do justice to this perks package. “Diamond-encrusted,” perhaps?
Plans for a pay raise didn’t seem to come up in the just-concluded election season.
But now that the ballots are counted, the cake appears to be baked: 31 of the council’s 51 members, led by Queens Councilwoman Nantasha Williams, are sponsoring the bill.
The council aimed to pass it before year’s end — until members realized that would violate the City Charter.
So Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani could see the measure on his desk as soon as January.
The $24,000 pay bump is justified, Williams writes, because members’ duties “require full-time focus, significant managerial oversight, and constant engagement with complex issues.”
The plan means she and her colleagues will pull down double the city’s median household income, pegged at around $75,000 in 2022.
That year, just 12% of the city’s tax filers made $150,000 or more, so council members are already among the top eighth of local earners.
Sure, managing finances and public services for the nation’s most populous city is a big job.
But if council members are dead-set on giving themselves a fat 16% raise, they can better justify the bump by putting some of that “focus,” “oversight” and “engagement with complex issues” to use.
They should make long-overdue reforms to their bountiful benefits package (and those of future city hires) to better align with what their constituents — the people paying for those perks — get themselves.
Start with health care. As medical and drug costs rose in the last decade, the city absorbed them, without asking employees or retirees to contribute.
The result: The city’s employee health-care costs today are twice what they were in 2013, ballooning from $4 billion to over $8 billion.
Replicating the city-provided coverage for a family of four on the private market would cost at least $38,000 a year.
Even state legislators pay 16% of the cost for their individual plans, or 31% for family coverage, on a range of state-contracted plans.
Even the MTA, notorious for its generous benefits, requires employees to chip in.
In the private sector, coverage-eligible workers in Mid-Atlantic states (of which New York is the biggest) pay an average of 19% toward individual coverage and 27% for family coverage.
Matching New York state’s health-insurance contribution rules for future active employees would trim part of the council’s raise — but within a year it would generate meaningful savings, reducing pressure to cut other programs or raise taxes.
It would also give the council a stronger leg to stand on as the city faces court challenges for modest changes to the benefits that go to its Medicare-eligible retirees.
Pensions, meanwhile, are increasingly rare in the private sector; just one in seven workers today has access to one.
There’s no good argument for City Council members performing a temporary public service to deserve an archaic benefit that was crafted for people working in government for an entire career — and designed at a time when people lived much shorter post-retirement lives.
The city’s pension costs went from less than $1 billion in 2000 to almost $8 billion in 2012, crowding out its ability to pay for services amid two recessions.
The state slowed some of that growth with reforms in 2010 and 2012, but pensions will cost New York City $10.5 billion this fiscal year and are expected to hit $11.5 billion by fiscal 2028.
That’s partially because public-employee unions, especially the United Federation of Teachers, have been slicing away at Albany’s previous cost controls, aiming to gut them entirely by allowing every city and state employee to retire at age 55 with a full pension.
If they’re successful, that would retroactively boost pension benefits (including for some council members) while jacking up the city’s costs.
A City Council truly concerned about affordability and preserving government services should lead by example — and change its own rules, so that members can no longer rack up pension credits at the public’s expense.
The state Legislature will need to enact more reforms to ease the pension burden on local taxpayers, but the council can also shift at least a portion of future city employees into a more affordable retirement plan, akin to a 401(k).
Given its members’ and the incoming mayor’s constant talk of “affordability,” it’s more important than ever for them to discuss how city taxpayers can afford the council’s wishes — including how much they afford themselves.
Ken Girardin is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.