Mayor Jacob Frey found one more piece of legislation to veto before year’s end: The City Council’s denial of raises for some of the city’s highest-paid employees.
The council voted 7-6 Thursday to deny 4% cost-of-living raises to about 160 appointed city employees who make six-figure salaries, beginning at about $109,000 and topping out at $348,000, according to the Frey administration. The decision saves the city about $1.1 million. The mayor’s office said the group of employees denied raises by the council includes department heads, deputy department directors, some division heads, cabinet members, police inspectors and commanders, senior staff in the city attorney’s office and some staff in the city clerk’s office.
That’s a narrow vote margin and not enough to override a veto. However, the council doesn’t meet again until January, the tax levy has been set, and the money for raises has been reallocated in the council-approved budget — which Frey vetoed but the council overrode.
In his veto letter, Frey urged the council to come to the table and work with him on a solution that gives all staff “the raises they deserve.” It’s not clear what can be done at this point, however.
“It is wrong to pick and choose which employees get a cost-of-living adjustment when the cost of living has increased for all employees,” he wrote. “I cannot endorse a council action that willfully disrespects and undermines the work of 163 dedicated public servants.”
He called the council’s action “unprecedented,” and said it “intractably impacted staff morale, and goes against good governorernance.”
While debating the raises during budgeting, Council Vice President and Budget Chair Aisha Chughtai said with the median Minneapolis household income at $81,000, in a year when property taxes are going up and people are cutting their own budgets, “we owe it to them to make cuts anywhere we can.”
Chughtai said she told the mayor the night before he sent the veto letter that she’s “one phone call away,” but “he hasn’t called.”
