Detroit council president, clerk seek pay raise

Detroit elected officials are asking for a pay raise.

City Council President Brenda Jones and Clerk Janice Winfrey on Wednesday lobbied members of a board that sets elected officials' salaries for a salary increase. They said that they are currently underpaid. A spokesman for Mayor Mike Duggan, however, said the mayor is OK with his salary and doesn't want a change.

The salaries of Detroit's elected leaders were last adjusted when they were cut 10% in 2010.

"I am going to ask you to seriously look at the pay," Jones said at a rare meeting of the Detroit Elected Officials Compensation Commission. "My days normally exceed 12 hours. I normally work Saturday and Sunday as well."

Jones said the council's pay was last increased in 2001.

The 10% pay cut effective in 2010 — put in place as the city's financial crisis simmered — left the mayor with $158,559 a year; council members and the city clerk with $73,181 a year; and the council president with $76,911 a year. Council members and the clerk get access to take-home city-owned cars.

The salary review comes three months after Detroit exited bankruptcy. The commission expects to hear at its next meeting March 16 how any raises would affect the city's bankruptcy exit plan, known as the plan of adjustment, and, whether the state-appointed Financial Review Commission would have a say about boosting salaries.

Winfrey told the commission that her pay should not be paired with the council's because she manages an office with a much higher budget and about 200 workers.

"I am not a member of City Council, yet my salary is paired with theirs," Winfrey said. "I am severely underpaid."

Commission members didn't give an indication of whether they were willing to recommend a raise. They requested a reports from various city agencies and recommendations from the elected officials themselves.

Commission Chairman Samuel Buzz Thomas III said he's interested to know the duties and salaries of elected officials elsewhere.

"So we are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges," he said. "I'd be curious how that relates to other cities."

But Jones, who was re-elected in 2013, said Detroit's elected leaders are unlike any others.

"We have just went through a historic bankruptcy proceeding," Jones said. "Our roles as council members, my role as council president, has changed tremendously. I don't know that there's any place you can even compare what we do today based on any other city council as we go through a plan of adjustment, as we have to abide by the plan of adjustment. There's just so many things that have changed tremendously."

Jones and Winfrey addressed the commission during the public comment portion of Wednesday's meeting.

The seven-member commission meets in odd-numbered years to decide whether Detroit's elected officials' pay should be changed. The commission does not handle benefits. The commission is expected to recommend any changes to the pay scale by the end of the month. The City Council can reject the changes with a vote of at least six out of nine members. In that case, the current salaries stay intact.

An e-mail account has been set up for the public to give input in the process: compensationcommission@detroitmi.gov.

Contact Joe Guillen: 313-222-6678 or jguillen@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joeguillen.