2024 Tulsa City Charter amendments: Council & Auditor salaries

Tulsa voters will see two proposed amendments to the City Charter on the August 27, 2024, city general election ballot. Both are worth approving.

Proposition 1 amends Article II, Section 2, to change a city councilor's salary from a fixed $24,000 per year to $32,000 per year, with biennial adjustments up or down based on cost-of-living. Here is the current text:

Each member of the Council shall receive a salary of twenty-four thousand dollars ($24,000.00) per year, commencing December 1, 2014, payable as employees of the city are paid. The City Council shall have no power to change its salary by its own vote. Councilors may be reimbursed for expenses incurred in the performance of their duties.

Here is the proposed replacement text, with new text underlined:

Each member of the Council shall receive a salary of thirty-two thousand dollars ($32,000.00) per year, commencing December 2, 2024, payable as employees of the City are paid. Thereafter any adjustment to City Council members' annual salaries shall be as certified by the City Treasurer to the City Council. Any adjustment, up or down, certified by the City Treasurer shall coincide with the start of a new City Council term. The salary certified by the City Treasurer shall be commensurate with the most local consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the immediately preceding two-year period. The City Council shall have no power to change its salary by its own vote. Councilors may be reimbursed for expenses incurred in the performance of their duties.

The original councilor's salary in the 1989 charter was $12,000. Although the Council had the power to vote for a salary increase to take effect after the next election, this was only done once, in 2002, increasing the salary to $18,000. In 2013, voters approved the current charter language, increasing the salary to $24,000 but removing the Council's power to adjust its salary.

While I like the idea of indexing the salary to inflation, and the method prescribed seems reasonable, I have a couple of concerns. City Treasurer is an office defined by the City Charter, but the method of appointment is not explicitly stated. If the City Treasurer is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Mayor, there's a separation-of-powers problem. It could be a means for the Mayor to punish a Council he doesn't like.

The definition of the price index in the "escalator clause" also requires some interpretation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly CPI-U release includes "Table 4: Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U): Selected areas, all items index." CPI-U is calculated monthly for the four standard statistical regions and nine statistical areas and the three largest metropolises (NYC, LA, Chicago), then every two months for 20 large and notably expensive metropolitan areas, like Boston, Atlanta, Washington, and Urban Hawaii. The number that appears to meet the definition of "most local consumer price index" is the West South Central CPI-U, which increased by 2.5% between July 2023 and July 2024. A note on the spreadsheet cautions against relying on local area numbers (emphasis added):

NOTE: Local area indexes are byproducts of the national CPI program. Each local index has a smaller sample size than the national index and is, therefore, subject to substantially more sampling and other measurement error. As a result, local area indexes show greater volatility than the national index, although their long-term trends are similar. Therefore, the Bureau of Labor Statistics strongly urges users to consider adopting the national average CPI for use in their escalator clauses.

Proposition No. 2 would increase the ratio used to calculate the City Auditor's salary from the Mayor's salary. The current language, in Article IV, Section 2:

The salary of the City Auditor shall be seventy percent (70%) of the salary of the Mayor payable as employees of the city are paid.

The proposed replacement would say:

The salary of the City Auditor shall be seventy-five percent (75%) of the salary of the Mayor, payable as employees of the City are paid.

Currently, the Mayor's salary is $105,000, so the Auditor's pay would increase from $73,500 to $78,750. These salaries haven't changed since 2002. Barely six figures is not the money you pay the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation. Mid-five figures is not what you pay the auditor of a billion-dollar corporation.

Of course, we've never had a CEO in the Mayor's office under the 1989 "strong mayor" charter. We've had schmoozers and ribbon cutters. The people with the necessary skills to keep city departments running get paid much more than the mayor. (Before 1989, city departments were under elected commissioners who also served as the city's legislative body.) Most "strong" mayors have hired a Chief Administrative Officer and/or Chief Operating Officer to coordinate the department heads and leave Hizzonner free to schmooze. Republican Brent VanNorman is the only mayoral candidate this year with the experience to enable him to act as city government's CEO.

In theory, keeping salaries low compared to private-sector salaries for similar levels of responsibility should filter out those who are just in politics for the money. In reality, to run for a full-time office and serve, you'd either have to be independently wealthy, retired, or young enough for the pay to be a step up. Of you could well-connected enough for the Powers That Be to get your spouse a well-paid, no-show job, with the promise of a cushy sinecure for yourself when your time in office is over. Professionals in mid-career without those connections would have to put their careers on hold and take a huge pay cut. Their families would endure a lifestyle cut along with the absence of a parent and the massive disruption to family life that holding office entails.

City Council is even worse. Done right, it's a full-time job with part-time pay. You can make that work as a retiree (e.g. Jim Mautino, Roscoe Turner), with a solo professional practice (e.g., attorneys John Eagleton and Rick Westcott, although serving on the Council would have cut into their availability for legal work), or perhaps as a business owner with employees who can manage the business while you go to council meetings (e.g. Bill Martinson, Chris Trail).

If you're a non-profit executive, being a councilor is just an extension of your day job, so there's no need to take paid time off to attend council meetings. You're not there to represent your constituents, you're there to do the bidding of the philanthropocrats who fund or employ you. Any salary for being a rubber-stamp at council meetings is just icing on a very rich cake.

I'll be voting yes on both propositions as a step in a better direction, but there are consequences to the small amounts we pay our city officials.