A commission assembled by Mayor Ron Nirenberg will soon examine and recommend potential changes to how much San Antonio’s mayor and City Council are paid — the first time those salaries have been reviewed since the city instituted professional council salaries in 2015.
The move comes as members of the Bexar County Commissioners Court, who make significantly more money than City Council members, also put together an advisory committee to assess county elected officials’ compensation this year. The result was a base pay increase for commissioners, plus a 5% raise this fiscal year and next.
How much elected officials are paid, as well as the process for adjusting those salaries, varies greatly among municipalities in Texas. But lessons learned from other cities, like a controversial 40% pay increase Austin City Council approved for itself last year, are encouraging leaders to look at more frequent adjustments.
Changes to the City Council’s salaries recommended by Nirenberg’s City Charter Review Commission would go before voters on the November 2024 ballot, along with other potential charter amendments.
Meanwhile, Bexar County commissioners approved their own raises this year, which were put forward by a citizens advisory committee staffed by the county’s Human Resources Department.
“Some people will think we commissioners make too much. Some people think we make too [little],” said Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores (Pct. 1). “With my degrees from Princeton and Harvard, compared to my classmates, I could be making a whole lot more.”
City of San Antonio
San Antonio City Council pay was last adjusted in 2015, when a charter review commission recommended creating the council’s first professional salaries, based on the city’s median household income at the time.
Council members went from being among the lowest-compensated major city officeholders in the nation, paid $20 per meeting, to making $45,722 per year. The mayor’s pay rose from $20 per meeting plus $3,000 per year to $61,725 per year, or 135% of the median household income.
After voters rejected a council pay increase in 2004, local business groups backed a campaign to support the 2015 raises, and voters approved the move 55%-45% on a municipal election ballot.
It’s unclear how much voters might be asked to approve for council pay in 2024.
Last year Fort Worth voters rejected a charter amendment that would have raised council members’ salaries to $45,000 from $25,000 and the mayor’s pay to $60,000 from $29,000.
It was the second time in six years that the city’s voters had said no to a pay raise for City Council members, and the mayor took on a second job this year.
Austin City Council’s self-approved raises boosted council pay from roughly $83,000 to $117,000 last year, while the mayor’s salary increased from $98,000 to $134,000. The city’s Human Resources Department said at the time that elected officials and staff were both underpaid compared to peer cities.
Dallas City Council members get paid $60,000 and the mayor earns $80,000. Council members voted themselves a $1,000 car allowance last year.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates San Antonio’s median household income was just above $55,000 in 2021.
Nirenberg asked the Charter Review Commission to look at whether council salaries should be based on “indexed terms that more accurately reflect the city’s cost of living and lower barriers to participation in city government.”
That could make San Antonio’s council pay more like El Paso’s, where members’ salaries are tied to the area’s median household income but revisited annually. Last year El Paso City Council members were paid roughly $52,500. The mayor is paid 150% of the median income.
Nirenberg told the San Antonio Report in June that San Antonio’s move to professional salaries had “allowed a lot of folks to access this job [who couldn’t] before.”
“If it’s 50 years until we change that [salary] again, we’re going to close the door again on a lot of folks who are willing to serve this community and not able to,” Nirenberg said.
Nirenberg’s Charter Review Commission will also consider overturning a 2018 charter amendment that limited the pay and tenure of the city manager, potentially giving the council authority over hiring, managing and determining the city manager’s pay based on competitive market rates.
The city’s 2024 fiscal year budget included a 4% percent pay increase for the city’s full-time and part-time employees and increased entry-level wages from $17.50 to $18.00. The moves were cheered by the local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Bexar County
Bexar County commissioners assembled a salary review committee this year to address an unusual problem in elected official pay.
Though the court experienced turnover on the dais in the 2022 midterm, raises turned down by previous commissioners carried forward to the new officeholders, leaving the four county precincts with salaries ranging between $131,000 and $148,000. Commissioners also receive a $9,000 auto allowance.
The county’s salary committee met three times before recommending that commissioners’ salaries be brought to a uniform $150,000 per year, plus a 5% pay increase for the 2024 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
It also called for another 5% pay increase for the 2025 fiscal year, at which point the county judge would make $209,000 while commissioners would make $174,000, including their auto allowances.
“Oftentimes people who run for office have family money, or they have a law office and they don’t have to be at work all the time,” said Clay-Flores, a former teacher and city employee who worked a full-time job throughout her first campaign in 2018 and stayed on after the election until she was sworn into office. “I think that electeds should get paid a decent salary because it opens up the field of people who can run for office.”
A presentation of the committee’s findings showed Bexar County’s elected official salaries were roughly $5,000 to $30,000 below the average for the state’s five largest counties.
The salary review committee’s 5% raises for elected office holders apply to a long list of county officials, including the district attorney, county clerk, district clerk, tax assessor-collector, sheriff, constables and justices of the peace. Only the county judge and commissioners received a base pay raise.
The committee instructed commissioners to stop declining pay increases and institute regular pay increases to avoid a scenario like Austin’s, where years of stagnation lead to large raises down the road.
“We don’t want to fall behind,” the committee’s chair, Paloma Ahmadi, a lawyer for financial tech company Brex Inc., told commissioners. “We don’t want cost of living to be ignored.”
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the San Antonio mayor’s pay prior to a 2015 increase. The mayor’s pay rose from $20 per meeting plus $3,000 to $61,725 annually.
