Shameless NYC Council members give themselves a big fat 18% pay hike on first day on the job

They raised a stink.City Council members overwhelmingly voted Thursday to give themselves an 18% raise — a shamelessly self-serving move that comes after months of thwarted attempts to pass a fat pay hike.A veto-proof 42-6 vote approved the measure to inflate council salaries to $175,500, as well as hike Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pay to $305,800 a year, backdated to January — the start of new terms in office and the first day on the job for some lawmakers.The nay votes all came from Republicans and conservative Democrats, including Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens), who said he pushed for savings in the city’s forever-bloated budget.“In my district, there are so, so many constituents that are living paycheck to paycheck and having problems making ends meet,” he said.“So, I cannot vote onto a bill to increase salaries for myself.”The raises come not only after lawmakers approved a record-breaking $126 billion city budget, but also a bid to sneakily pass a smaller 16% hike as 2025 closed.The end-of-year pay ploy ultimately failed, leading the effort’s champion Councilwoman Nantasha Williams (D-Queens) to try again — this time with the support of a three-person “Quadrennial Commission.”The commission released a 127-page study in June recommending a 18.2% raise to restore the “lost purchasing power” in elected officials’ supposedly skimpy salaries because of inflation and cost of living increases.The study also recommended automatic pay hikes of at least 2% every year in the future.But council members ultimately jettisoned the automatic raises in the bill’s final version, opting instead to reconvene the pay commission every three years.The bill approved by council members set the following raises:Council Speaker Julie Menin, a millionaire, was the sole abstention in the final vote.

She said she won’t accept the raise.The speaker said before the vote that lawmakers wanted to give middle-income city workers inflation-related raises, but blame...