Rock Hill council OKs 3 percent pay increase for mayor, council

The Rock Hill City Council has approved a 3 percent increase in pay for the mayor and council, under a plan to review pay for elected city leaders every two years.

The mayor’s pay would increase to $27,208, from the current $26,416, while council members’ pay would rise to $17,323, from $16,819, under the measure approved by the council Monday on a 4-3 vote – its second and final vote on the matter.

However, pay increases will not become effective until January 2018, after the next cycle of council elections, under a 2013 plan adopted by the council to regularly review and vote on its pay.

Mayor Doug Echols and council members Jim Reno, Ann Williamson and Sandra Oborokumo voted in favor of the pay increases, while council members John Black, Kevin Sutton and Kathy Pender voted against.

The plan for reviewing council pay was recommended by a citizens committee in 2013, when the council agreed to nearly double its pay after 25 years without a pay increase.

Echols said he supported the most recent increase, based on a formula recommended by the citizens group, to prevent compensation from falling into the situation it was in 2013.

“This isn’t about money, necessarily,” Echols said. “It’s about making sure you at least have a compensation structure that will attract candidates who can afford to be on the council.”

The council last approved a pay increase for itself in June 2014, when it last reviewed its pay. It is scheduled to review and vote for or against a pay increase for itself every other year, under recommendations from a citizens group that were accepted by the council in 2013.

Said Echols: “We don’t want to find ourselves where it becomes a political beach ball, and the council gets in the situation where they don’t want to look at the compensation.”

Reno said the formula for pay increases, which involves adding the previous two years’ consumer price index adjustments, is important. It caps council raises to no higher than raises provided to city employees for the two budget years, he said.

City employees in recent years have received a 1.5 percent annual performance-based pay increase, said city spokeperson Katie Quinn. Based on that annual pay increase for city employees, council raises are capped at 3 percent every other year.

Reno said the process for reviewing raises and the formula for setting the amount helps prevent mayor and council pay from lagging behind.

“No government body wants to talk about it,” Reno said. “It’s awkward to talk about your own salary.”

However, Reno said low mayor and council pay can make it problematic to get qualified candidates to seek office.

“With low pay, nobody steps forward, you don’t have contested races,” Reno said. “You want to draw talented and interested people to run for office.”

Sutton, who said he supported the work of the citizen committee, said he voted against the most recent increase. He said he doesn’t like the way the decision on mayor and council pay increases is wrapped into the budget process.

“The concern I have is that raising council salaries should be a painful process,” Sutton said. “It was very uncomfortable when we did it the first time, and I don’t think anything should be done to make that an easier process.”

Sutton said other public bodies wrap votes on elected leaders’ pay increases into the budget process, and the decision on the increases is less visible.

“I think it should be a very open process, and I don’t think it’s something that you do every year,” Sutton said.

“I think we went from one extreme to the other,” Sutton said. “We hadn’t had a change in 25 years, and now we’ve gone to a process where it’s very easy and we’re doing it every other year.”

This story was originally published June 30, 2016 at 3:21 PM with the headline "Rock Hill council OKs 3 percent pay increase for mayor, council."