Mayor Johnson Backs Pay Hikes For Elected Officials, Including Him

Mayor Cavalier Johnson addresses a crowd at an event. File photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson could be about to expend considerable political capital pursuing a pay increase for 81 city officials, including himself.

Under the proposal every elected official in the city would receive a 15% salary increase after they secure reelection in 2024. The dozens of nonelected officials on the list, primarily cabinet members and their top deputies, would receive at least a 10% bump immediately and many of them would be eligible to make far more than the mayor in the future.

It’s a move Johnson is backing because the last time city elected officials were given a pay increase was 2008 and for several years administration officials have said the city has struggled to attract top outside talent for its cabinet-level openings. The proposal also follows wage increases of at least 2% for all general city employees in two consecutive budgets, and additional salary increases for longevity and on a per-position basis.

“It was very intentional to look at our general city employees first,” said Johnson’s chief of staff Nick DeSiato in an interview with Urban Milwaukee. The city has experienced record vacancy levels in the past year. “We lost many employees citing salaries as a reason. And we just anecdotally and informally know people didn’t apply for positions because of salaries.”

The move to boost executive pay follows Johnson’s negotiation for a new 2% city sales tax this summer. “Until we knew we had financial security, we didn’t touch the executive rates. We touched the other ones knowing we had to do it regardless,” said DeSiato.

The proposal must still be formally introduced and approved by the full Common Council. But DeSiato said the Mayor’s Office has worked with the Department of Employee Relations on the proposal for more than a year. It is expected to cost approximately $1 million annually.

“It is not lost on me that the timing with the sales tax seems dubious, but the reality was we couldn’t do this unless we had financial security. We knew we had to do with our general city employees regardless,” said the chief of staff.

The proposal follows a Johnson-backed initiative approved last summer that allows a list of specific positions, primarily cabinet members and high-level attorneys, to have salaries higher than the mayor’s. The mayor’s $147,335 had long served as the city’s salary cap, but the mayor’s pay would grow to $169,436. Council members would see their base pay grow from $73,222 to $84,205.

The five highest-paid nonelected positions (the police and fire chiefs, the commissioners of health and public works and the director of the Department of Administration) would see their maximum salary grow from $171,838 to $229,958. Nonelected officials are subject to position-based salary ranges and under the proposed increases would see their exact salary grow by the greater of 10% above their current rate of pay or the new minimum for their position.

“This is a 15% [pay increase], which on its face seems like a really huge number. But frankly, it’s closer to a third of the percentage increase if they had just kept up with the cost of living,” said DeSiato, citing approximately 43% inflation since 2008.

“At the end of the day, this was the right thing to do,” said DeSiato. “This was recognizing that we have hardworking executives including elected officials and to be a successful city, to frankly be a first-class city, we need to have first-class competitive rates… We should be, as a first-class city, able to recruit first-class candidates. We should be having people from around the country saying I want to go to Milwaukee.”

The news become public through a leak to talk radio host Dan O’Donnell, who was provided with an email that employee relations director Harper Donahue, IV sent to council members that detailed the proposal.

“This is the right thing to do, to appropriately pay the executives throughout the city of Milwaukee,” said DeSiato. “We want to make sure we have the ability to constantly be able to recruit the best and the brightest.”

DeSiato, in a claim backed by several departments’ recent budget presentations, said the salary increases and reclassifications are working and drawing workers back to city roles they left.

“If this doesn’t get implemented, since 2008 was the last pay raise for the alders, that’s 20 years of not having an increase specifically as it relates to our council members,” said DeSiato. “That’s crazy. Who would be in a position to not have a pay raise in 20 years.”

Why not authorize the elected official increase now, but wait until 2028 for implementation? “Because they’re long overdue. They are incredibly underpaid,” said DeSiato. “This is less than what logic would dictate if we were in the private sector.

Johnson himself did not provide direct comment on the matter.

Under state law, salaries of elected officials may only be raised for a future term. If the proposal isn’t passed by late April 2024, the next eligible increase point would be April 2028.

“It is inevitable at some point we are going to have to make a salary adjustment. It’s certainly logical to do it now,” said Johnson’s communications director Jeff Fleming.

Johnson has found himself attached to a salary increase controversy before, although not as the central figure. While serving as a Common Council member in 2018, Johnson was a co-sponsor of Alderwoman Chantia Lewis‘ elected official pay increase proposal. That proposal, which would have awarded a 4% elected official pay increase in 2020 and 13.6% total by 2024%, died a quiet death after a committee approved it on a narrow vote. Lewis herself killed it on the council floor, moving to send it back to committee, where it was never heard again. Johnson co-sponsored the measure alongside then-council president Ashanti Hamilton, José G. Pérez and Russell W. Stamper, II. Ald. Milele A. Coggs joined Lewis and Stamper in voting for the proposal when it was before the finance committee, with Michael Murphy and then-alderman Terry Witkowski voted against the proposal. Then-mayor Tom Barrett opposed the plan based on its size and failure to address the city’s then-looming fiscal crisis.

Pérez, the current council president, and Marina Dimitrijevic, the Finance & Personnel Committee chair, said the council is “considering” the proposal. Both said it was important that general city workers be addressed first. “I firmly believe that we have to address lagging executive pay in city government as a whole,” said Pérez.

“It’s a draft,” said Dimitrijevic. She said as finance chair several departments have now briefed her on the positive impacts, in terms of hiring and retention, of increasing salaries for general workers. She said the city is now shifting to reviewing executive compensation. “It’s under consideration.”

The council president said he thought more internal discussions would happen before a proposal was possibly formally introduced.

A copy of the proposed wage increase plan is available on Urban Milwaukee. Additionally, a 2023 wage study by the City of Minneapolis, available on Urban Milwaukee, shows Milwaukee as offering middle-of-the-road pay for its mayor.