The Haines Borough Assembly voted overwhelmingly to boost pay for itself and for the Mayor at an assembly meeting on Aug. 22, despite reservations about the timing and optics of the increase.
Under the new pay scale, members will get paid $175 per regular or special assembly meeting, not including committee meetings. The mayor’s pay will be boosted from $7,000 per year to $15,000. The proposal was budgeted to cost the city $25,900 per year.
Proponents of the increase argued the salary boost would help attract a more diverse pool of candidates.
“The current pay rate sends the message that we only want representation from the financially secure,” said assembly member Ben Aultman-Moore. He said he was reluctant to run for assembly last year because of concerns about time and money.
“I’m a carpenter, I’m working class. I wondered if I can afford to volunteer that much time, and I don’t want it to be a question for other people,” he said.
Proponents also said the amount of work required for the positions far exceeded the salaries. Outside of the every-two-weeks meeting time, which can last more than three hours, assembly members also attend committee meetings and sit on the Board of Equalization. Members say they spend at least a few hours per week outside of those official meetings.
“Around the budget cycle it was a meeting every day or every other day. That ended up being way too much for anybody,” said Aultman-Moore, who said during that period he was spending an extra six to eight hours per week on assembly business. But he called the hours “extremely variable” and said he sometimes spends as little as one or two hours outside of meeting time.
“There’s weeks like this last packet with 49 pages and I pretty much knew what my opinion was about everything we voted on,” he said in a phone interview.
Member Debra Schnabel said there are also other time costs, including the responsibilities of being in town at meetings, which includes forgoing family birthdays and other inconveniences.
“You can’t decide to go for three months to Africa,” she said. “You’re being paid to be inconvenienced.”
Mayor Douglas Olerud said he’s had to commit as many as 50 hours per week or more to his role during the 2020 landslide. During periods when the borough is working on budgets or negotiating a collective bargaining agreement, he said he works up to 40 hours.
The mayor’s salary was dropped in 2017 to $7,000 from $15,000 after some members argued the office was getting more than comparable communities. The recent change bumps it back up to the level set in 2010.
Communities vary widely in how elected officials are compensated. Sitka assembly members are paid $500 per month or an average of $250 per meeting. In Juneau, the Mayor is paid $3,500 per month, and assembly members get $750. Skagway members get $125 per meeting, and the Mayor gets $12,000 per year. Wrangell assembly members and the Mayor are unpaid.
Academic research is limited on the effects of salary increases on diversity of legislators. Some advocacy groups, like the New American Leaders, say data shows paying state legislators for full-time work and providing staff support increases diversity of legislatures.
A 2016 study published in the American Political Science Review suggested the opposite can be true, since higher wages can attract more professional politicians instead of people from working class backgrounds.
Olerud, who is not seeking reelection, championed the cause for salary increases.
“If you look at code, and when you look at code, it is very narrowly defined on what the Mayor does,” Olerud told the assembly. “The community of Haines’ expectations for the role of Mayor are much different than what code says.”
He said mayors are expected to go to different committee meetings so that they have an understanding of issues before they arrive at the assembly.
“For what Haines expects from their elected officials, that should be reflected in the amount that we pay our elected officials and that goes to assembly people also,” he said.
Jerry Lapp was the only assembly member to vote against the salary boost. He argued that in a difficult economic climate with rising property taxes and inflation, paying members more sent the wrong message.
“Right now people are struggling, because a lot of things are high. And I think it sends a wrong message. And it’s a bad look for the assembly to up their pay rates at this time,’ he said.
Assembly member Gabe Thomas introduced an amendment to only boost pay for the Mayor.
“I struggle with the fact that we’re talking about raising our own wages when we couldn’t even just retain a police chief,” he said, referring to Heath Scott’s resignation announcement. “I feel bad taking money when we’re letting someone go.”
Schnabel countered that assembly members were free to donate their extra money back to the borough.
Thomas’s motion narrowly failed on a 3-3 assembly vote with Olerud breaking the tie. Thomas ultimately voted in favor of the salary boost.