Council Sets Personal Salaries

The sly and underhanded method by which the Cambridge City Council proposed a salary hike for its own members, although technically and procedurally sound, is a sad example of public officials deliberately misleading those they purport to serve.

In a meeting last Monday, the City Council proposed to raise annual salaries for council members by nearly $10,000 to $52,500. They also proposed to raise the salaries of school committee members by almost $5,000 to $25,900not minor pay hikes. However, the agenda made no formal mention of the salary increase, saying only that it was a "recommended amendment to the Cambridge Municipal Code." The council later voted, 6-3, against giving the matter a public hearing.

City Manager Robert W. Healy has said that the council proceeded according to a standard form used for pay increases for the last 20 to 30 years. Another council member remarked that debating the issue would have been a "waste of time." But while the public's time should not be wasted debating nickels and dimes, the council should have been more candid about subjecting this amendment to some level of public scrutiny. Nobody doubts that public officials should have salaries adjusted for inflation. But this particular salary hike yields a net increase, after adjusting for inflation, of roughly 20 percent.

Regardless of whether such a pay increase is justifiable or not, supplying adequate information to the public about any increase--especially one as large as this one--is standard procedure. The kind of shameful semantic obfuscation employed by Healy and those six other council members who voted to shield this matter from an open hearing should be met with nothing less than public outrage.