Amid budget cuts, city officials up for raises

By Jeff Shields

Inquirer Staff Writer

While the recession plods forward and the City of Philadelphia asks its workers to swallow no salary increases for the next four years, all elected officials are up for 5 percent raises Tuesday.

Annual cost-of-living-adjustments, or COLAs, are due to the mayor, City Council, and row officers on June 30 under the 2003 law that set current salaries.

Mayor Nutter will give back his 5.13 percent increase, as will 19 cabinet members and commissioners who are scheduled for the increase, a spokesman said yesterday.

Nutter slashed his $186,044 salary 10 percent in November in announcing budget cuts to deal with the worsening financial crisis. The COLA amount is $9,544, for a total giveback of about $28,000. Nutter is also taking a 2 percent cut in the form of a one-week furlough this year - five unpaid vacation days that he'll most likely work through.

Council Majority Whip Darrell Clarke said he was waiting for a chance next week to meet with Council President Anna C. Verna, who has been out since her husband, Severino, died June 13.

The Nutter administration has asked the four unions representing the city's more than 20,000 blue- and white-collar workers, whose contracts expire Tuesday, to accept four-year contracts with no raises. In that light, Clarke said, it may be difficult for Council members to accept an increase in their $112,233 salaries.

"If the municipal workers don't get a raise, we'd have to consider doing something different," he said.

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sánchez said she could not see Council taking a raise of any kind "given the economic times."

"I'm clear that it would be inappropriate for City Council, at this time, to take the increase," she said.

How that would work is unclear. Council established the automatic annual raise in 2003, when it overrode a veto by Mayor John F. Street and upped Council salaries from $85,339 to $98,000.

The COLA is based on the current Consumer Price Index, which came in at 5.13 percent this year, Finance Director Rob Dubow said. Last year it was 1.57 percent.

That 2003 ordinance also raised all other elected officials salaries, including the mayor's, which rose from $144,009 to $165,000.

Most important, Clarke said, is that whatever Council's 17 members decide, they act as one. He said he did not like it this year when eight members gave back 5 percent of their salary - Clarke was not one of them - and the others were criticized in the press.

"We're going to have a conversation, because whatever we do, we should all do the same," Clarke said.

Other elected officials will also have a decision to make.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz said he would not accept the increase "because the city is still in severe financial crisis, the budget is not resolved, the city workers are being asked for substantial sacrifices, and city taxpayers still look like they're going to be asked for substantial sacrifices.

"It's inappropriate for city leaders to get increases under those circumstances while the people of the city and the city workers are incurring substantial sacrifice," he said.

Butkovitz said he would keep his take-home pay at its current level - his $115,627 salary minus 5 percent, a reduction he volunteered for as part of budget cuts. Register of Wills Ronald Donatucci also gave back 5 percent of his salary.

Donatucci said he would accept the COLA, which will move his salary from $112,233 to $117,991, then give back 5 percent to the city as he has done for the last six months. So, in effect, Donatucci breaks even and will take home about 5 percent more than he has for the last six months.

None of the other row officers could be reached for comment yesterday. They are Clerk of Quarter Sessions Vivian Miller; City Commissioners Margaret Tartaglione, Anthony Clark, and Joseph Duda; and Sheriff John Greene.

A separate law governs District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham's salary.

Aside from the COLA, the eight Council members who gave back 5 percent of their salaries over the last six months have to decide whether to continue that act. Those who took the cut - they had to accept the money in their paychecks, then hand it back to the city - were Verna, Majority Leader Marian Tasco, Frank DiCicco, Wilson Goode Jr., Bill Green, Curtis Jones Jr., Jim Kenney, and Joan Krajewski.

Kenney is the only one who has officially committed to the cut for fiscal 2010, beginning Wednesday, according to the President's Office. Green said he would also take the 5 percent cut in the form of payroll deductions to the Friends of the Free Library. Last year, Council passed Green's bill that created such a payroll deduction.

Contact staff writer Jeff Shields at 215-854-4565 or jshields@phillynews.com.

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