NY City Council launches process to give itself, other elected officials, pay raises

Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on Mar 10, 2026

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NEW YORK — The City Council voted Tuesday to start the process of giving local elected officials pay bumps with the formation of a commission.

The bill will establish a three-person commission that will decide if raises are in order for the city’s mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough presidents, council members and district attorneys.

An earlier version of the bill, sponsored by Deputy Council Speaker Nantasha Williams, sought to raise councilmember’s pay by 16%, for a yearly compensation of $172,500.

“Today’s vote advances the Charter-outlined process for reviewing elected official compensation,” Williams said. “The last full review took place in 2016, and this legislation provides the structure for the Council to revisit that question in a clear and transparent way. The Charter anticipates periodic review, and this action ensures that responsibility is addressed through the process the law establishes.”

Under the City Charter, the Quadrennial Commission is supposed to convene every four years to ascertain whether pay bumps are warranted. But local elected officials have not received any raises in over a decade because the past two mayors, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams, did not convene the commission for two consecutive terms

Spokespeople for Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Efforts to push the bill forward started late last year, when Williams introduced the bill at the end of the session. The plan was initially for the Council to vote on the bill before the end of 2025, the Daily News previously reported.

But the Council walked that back, putting off any vote until 2026 because of to a City Charter restriction prohibiting the body from pushing through raises in the lame duck period of an election year.

Efforts to vote on it in were again pushed back in January, with the bill amended to give Mamdani a longer runway for appointing people to the commission.

Under the final version of the bill, Mamdani will have 45 days after the legislation’s passage to appoint the three members, who will then have 75 days to study the situation before issuing recommendations to the mayor and council.

The effort to give elected officials the pay bump also comes as Mamdani has emphasized a multibillion dollar gap the city is struggling to meet. It’s unclear what the potential cost of pay raises may be, though the mayor has said he won’t accept a raise himself.

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