SAN JOSE — Fed up with political fallout from voting on their own salaries, San Jose lawmakers will ask voters to scrap the longstanding protocol of the City Council approving its own pay raises.

If approved by voters next year, San Jose’s mayor and City Council members will get an automatic raise every July tied to cost-of-living increases. But it would be capped at 5 percent per year and the council could vote to decline it.

The change requires a vote by residents, costing San Jose about $136,000 to put a measure on the June or November ballot in 2018.

Since 1995, San Jose’s mayor and council members have relied on an appointed salary-setting commission to make recommendations on their salaries and benefits every two years. City law allows them either to accept the recommended salary boost, decline it or adopt a lower amount.

The mayor and council members for years have refused the raises — for political reasons or because city employees took pay cuts amid budget shortfalls and a deep recession. Mayor Sam Liccardo and the council in January 2016 approved raises, but put off another boost last May.

Liccardo, along with Vice Mayor Magdalena Carrasco, and council members Chappie Jones, Raul Peralez and Sylvia Arenas, proposed stripping the council of the decision-making power and going with the automatic raises. The council approved the idea on a 10-1 vote Tuesday with Councilman Lan Diep opposed.

Diep said the council should not divest its own authority and a ballot measure is not a “worthwhile” expense. “I just say we should have more political courage, if we think we are worth that,” Diep said during the meeting. “There’s a lot to this job.”

But Liccardo said elected officials voting on their own salaries is “bad for public confidence” and it creates conflicting loyalties.

“To be voting on budgets at the same time we’re voting on our own salaries — which are paid out of that same budget — is fundamentally a conflict,” the mayor said.