Boston City Council weighs pay raises for council staffers

Boston city councilors voted to bump their salaries last year and are now considering raising wages for their staffers as well.

Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, chair of the council’s Committee on Ways and Means, is the lead sponsor of a proposed ordinance to bump up the allocated budget councilors receive to provide salaries to their staff, seeking to raise the allotment from the current $315,000 to $390,000 per year.

Under the proposal, Council President Ed Flynn’s office would receive $460,000 to divvy up for salaries.

Fernandes Anderson told councilors Wednesday staff wages should reflect more than qualifications and credentials. Officials should also consider Boston’s expensive housing market and high cost of living when determining what to pay their employees, she said.

The pay raise filing cites statistics from the Federal Reserve that show residents here need to earn around $80,000 annually to spend the recommended maximum of 28% of their monthly income on housing.

Boston’s Consumer Price Index also rose 7% between 2021 and 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The highest-ranking staffers, the council’s chiefs of staff, currently gross about $75,000 and no more than $80,000, despite working weeks that regularly stretch into 50, 60, and 70 hours long, according to Fernandes Anderson.

“We’re not paying our staff properly,” Fernandes Anderson said. “And again, I’ll say it here: If we love people and we care about people, we respect them — and if you respect them, you pay them.”

Although the ordinance does not spell out specific salaries, Fernandes Anderson told her colleagues she is suggesting all council staffers make, at minimum, $72,000 a year.

Salaries, of course, can vary by position.

Offices can typically include a chief of staff, constituent services coordinator, research and policy director, office manager, communications director, and/or a scheduler. However, the current budget allows for a councilor to hire only four staffers at a salary rate that’s considered livable for a renter in Boston, according to the proposal.

Fernandes Anderson offered chiefs of staff should make up to $103,000 a year — a sum $500 short of being on par with what a councilor earns annually right now. (Councilors will, through the measure passed in November, begin making $115,000 in 2024, $120,000 in 2025, and $125,000 in 2026.)

“This isn’t about us. We shouldn’t compare what we get paid to our staff, and our staff goes above and beyond,” Fernandes Anderson told councilors.

Beyond just the hours they work, many chiefs of staff are either attorneys or have high qualifications worthy of that salary, she said.

“They come in and they put in the work, they put in the heart,” she said.

Whatever pay change will come, if any, however, remains in flux.

A council committee on Monday held a working session on the matter — the kind of meeting where councilors hash out the finer points of any potential ordinance.

Flynn said Wednesday councilors discussed a variety of related topics during the session, including how to make the budget so salaries are more competitive and help to better retain talent at City Hall.

“We all agree that our staffs are indispensable, that they should earn a fair wage for all the work they do,” Flynn said. “I believe we still have work to do to come to a common ground that will allow us to offer good wages while being fiscally responsible.”

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