After tense debate, pay increase repeals pulled

By DANIEL KITTREDGE
Posted 6/4/20

Following a frequently tense discussion, the City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday removed from consideration a pair of proposals seeking to repeal pay raises for the mayor and next …

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After tense debate, pay increase repeals pulled

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Following a frequently tense discussion, the City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday removed from consideration a pair of proposals seeking to repeal pay raises for the mayor and next council.

“I just don’t see legally how we can proceed on this without opening up a Pandora’s box in the future,” John Verdecchia, one of the council’s attorneys, said during the virtual Zoom meeting.

“The timing of this stinks, the ethics of this stink, and I don’t like it one bit,” attorney Evan Kirshenbaum added.

Kirshenbaum also said he inquired with a veteran legal staffer for the state Ethics Commission about the repeal proposals. The staffer’s response, he said, was: “I would not touch this with a 10-foot pole.”

Ward 2 Councilman Paul McAuley, who introduced the repeal proposals with Ward 1 Councilwoman Lammis Vargas as a co-sponsor, expressed frustration with the opinion from the attorneys, saying Kirshenbaum had advised during the council’s budget review that the ordinance amendment process was the preferable way to pursue a rollback of the pay hikes.

“It would have been nice if you would could have given me a heads-up and called me … I’m not exactly accepting these explanations,” McAuley said regarding the attorneys’ advice Monday.

Citywide Councilman Ken Hopkins, who issued a statement of support for suspending the pay increases after Mayor Allan Fung called for that action during his State of the City address, also pushed back against the attorneys. He suggested the ethics concerns constituted “scare tactics” and added: “We’re getting lectured and I’m not getting legal advice.”

Hopkins said he viewed the attorneys’ opinions as overly broad, and later defended the pay hike repeals as warranted in the face of the pandemic and its economic fallout.

“If I have to go in front of the Ethics Commission to explain that purpose,” he said, “I would take that to the Supreme Court.”

Several council members complained Monday that they did not receive an email ahead of the meeting outlining the findings of legal counsel with regard to the pay raise repeals. A motion to continue the matter was briefly considered, but ultimately, based on the opinions from Verdecchia and Kirshenbaum, the committee voted 5-2 to remove both repeal proposals from consideration.

City Council President Michael Farina, Ward 3 Councilman John Donegan, Ward 4 Councilman Ed Brady, Ward 5 Councilman Chris Paplauskas and Ward 6 Councilman Michael Favicchio, the committee’s chairman, made up the majority, while Hopkins and McAuley were opposed.

The pay raises – which will bring the mayor’s salary from roughly $80,000 to $105,000, compensation for council members from $4,000 to $6,000, and the pay for the council’s president from $5,000 to $8,000 starting on Jan. 4, 2021 – were the subject of significant debate prior to their passage last year.

Supporters of the raises noted that the mayor’s pay has not been raised since 2002 and compensation for council members has been unchanged since the 1980s, and said the increases – particularly for the mayor’s office – would help attract quality candidates. Opponents argued that the money for the raises could better be directed elsewhere. Fung ultimately allowed both measures to take effect without his signature.

According to the timeline set out by Verdecchia and Kirshenbaum during Monday’s meeting, it was Verdecchia who first found issues with McAuley’s proposed ordinance amendments last week. He said based on his research, he then contacted Kirshenbaum.

Verdecchia presented two main concerns, one “procedural” and the other “substantive.” The first, he said, is the “Pandora’s box” of reconsidering an ordinance amendment just months after its passage – particularly when the financial impact, even considering the effects of the pandemic, is relatively minor compared to the scope of the city’s budget.

“I think to justify this from a procedural standpoint, it has to be a more compelling reason,” he said.

Verdecchia also said based on his research, the timing of the repeal effort “is extremely problematic from an ethical standpoint.” Essentially, his interpretation of the law is that any vote by a potential candidate could later be construed as an attempt to have an effect on themselves or a prospective opponent.

Given that the candidacy declaration period for office seekers will arrive later this month – around the same time the full council would have considered the repeals had they passed through the committee – and the fact that several council members have announced their plans to run for mayor or reelection, he said council members would “more than likely … have to justify this before the Ethics Commission at some point” were they to vote on the proposals.

Responding to questions from Stycos, Verdecchia said the pay raise ordinances approved last year met legal and ethics standards because they were passed well ahead of the election and filing period.

In terms of the repeal proposals, he said, “We’re at the 11th hour, literally at the 11th hour.”

As of Monday, Hopkins and Farina, both Republicans, have declared their candidacy for mayor. Paplauskas, also a Republican, has announced his plans to seek reelection. Citywide Councilman Steve Stycos, a Democrat, has also announced his mayoral candidacy.

Kirshenbaum concurred with Verdecchia, saying: “It’s impossible to vote on this if you’re going to run for office next year.” He also defended his earlier advice to McAuley, saying he does not believe it is “appropriate to bootstrap an ordinance within a line item” – in other words, to roll back the pay hikes through the budget process.

“My advice, even if I knew this, would not have differed,” he said.

He added, in response to Hopkins’ “scare tactics” charge: “I’m not trying to scare anyone. I’m trying to inform you.”

Initially, Brady suggested the matter be continued based on the fact that multiple council members indicated they had not received an email outlining the lawyers’ concerns ahead of the meeting.

In respond to questioning from Farina, however, the attorneys said their view was that any action other than removing the proposals from Monday’s docket could lead to ethics entanglements down the road.

Brady withdrew his continuation motion, and Farina motioned successfully to remove both measures from the night’s docket.

McAuley at one point suggested that to address the ethics concerns, council members essential split their votes to avoid conflicts – the members who are running for mayor abstaining from the mayoral pay raise repeal, and those seeking reelection not voting on the council pay. The attorneys pushed back against that suggestion and no motion was made.

Favicchio also said that the next mayor and members of the next council will have the option of returning the amount of the pay increase to the city as an alternative means of effectively repealing the raises.

McAuley, pushing back against Verdecchia’s argument that the roughly $41,000 figure associated with the increases is minor in the larger scheme of the city’s budget, noted that the council worked “hard” to secure roughly $45,000 in additional funding for the city’s schools during its budget review process last week.

“This isn’t just a feel-good amendment,” he said.

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