NEW YORK CITY—With just a handful of members objecting, New York City Council voted to raise its members’ own pay by 18.2 percent on July 16.
The measure, introduced by deputy speaker Nantasha Williams, passed with a veto-proof majority of 42–6. Council member Phil Wong, of Queens, spoke out against the pay raise.
“I spent many months advocating savings in the city budget, identifying savings, so I cannot [conscientiously] vote for a bill increasing the salary for myself,” Wong said.
In March, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released his savings plan, in which city agencies and departments would each make sacrifices in order for the city to close its budget gap.
The new raise pushes city council members’ pay from $148,500 to $175,500; the mayor from $258,750 to $305,800; the public advocate from $184,800 to $218,400, and the city council speaker from $164,500 to $194,400.
The new pay raise for city council and other citywide elected officials will be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2026. The total cost for the city would be $1,732,600 annually—however, Mamdani and Speaker Julie Menin have both said they would not accept the raise.
Menin was the sole member who abstained during the vote.
A report of a three-member panel commissioned by the city council earlier this year, Quadrennial Advisory Commission, recommended the 18.2 percent increase, based on cost of living increases in New York City from 2021 to 2025.
The commission recommended a 2 percent annual pay raise be automatic going forward and that a review be conducted every four years during the third year of a mayor’s term. The bill initially included the 2 percent automatic increase, but it was dropped from the final version.
Williams, who helped set up the panel, framed the pay increase as cost-of-living adjustment in written testimony to the commission, saying “a cost-of-living adjustment simply ensures that compensation retains its real value over time, consistent with how inflation and economic conditions have evolved.”
The only testimony in opposition to the increase came from Wong, who wrote that, “residents are facing rising rents, grocery bills, utility costs, childcare expenses, and property taxes while increasingly questioning whether government is living within its means.”
“In my district there are so, so many constituents that live paycheck to paycheck,” Wong said July 16 at the vote.
The pay raise brings the city council members’ pay on par with members of Congress, who make $174,000.
City council pay was last raised in 2016, when it went from $112,500 to $148,500.
