Pittsburgh City Council’s salary hike to begin next week

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh’s City Council voted in December, as part of the city’s budget, to give themselves a 22% salary hike.

City Council members, who had been making $72,000 a year, are now getting a big bump to $88,000 a year. That doesn’t include Councilman Corey O’Connor — the only one on the City Council who personally turned down the raise.

Michael Lamb, the City’s controller and fiscal watchdog, isn’t pleased with the salary raise and says the public should be outraged.

“It’s unexplainable,” Lamb tells Channel 11. “We have people all throughout this region who have sacrificed throughout this pandemic, financially and otherwise and to see this kind of action by our elected representatives is a problem.”

The $16,000 raise is drastically more than the 3% raise other city employees are getting as part of their union contracts and Lamb says it’s against the city’s home charter rule, which limits how much of a salary increase council can give themselves. The controller tells Channel 11 how the council went about this was wrong.

“The fact that there was never a public discussion of this — it was kind of snuck into the budget — goes against everything I talk about and really everything council talks about in dealing in a public forum,” Lamb continued. “Aside from the various expenses the city has, we’re really not living up to a standard,” Lamb added, citing recent taxpayer criticism of snow removal.

People we talked to say the 22% raise is outrageous.

“It’s just not right,” Bill Lowe tells Channel 11. “When everyone else that works for the city is getting 2-3% and they’re going to vote for that kind of raise — you just don’t do that. That’s a bad look.”

Channel 11 called, texted and emailed several of the council members, including council president Theresa Kail-Smith, but never heard back.

Councilman Corey O’Connor was the only person to return our calls. He’s also the only City Council member who turned down the raise and won’t get a 22% increase in his paycheck Friday. O’Connor says the budget is still open and there’s still time for other council members to make a change.

Lamb says the decision for the council to take these kinds of raises could lead to litigation.

“I think they’re going to have to do the right thing,” Lamb added.

The City Council will meet next Tuesday and Wednesday. The controller says with the council’s first paycheck reflecting the raise coming next Friday, the time to act and make a change is now.

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