Wichita City Council pay has climbed 24% in 5 years. Voters could get a say in future  

Wichita’s City Council members have awarded themselves raises of 24 percent since 2015, increasing their annual salaries from $36,999 to $46,026 for what is considered a part-time job.

During that same time frame, the mayor has gotten an 18 percent raise, bumping his annual salary from $87,712 to $103,560.

The latest bump came in December, when elected officials gave themselves a 1.25-percent cost-of-living raise and a 2.5-percent raise based on merit.

It’s the most recent pay increase they’ve given themselves over the past five years with limited public scrutiny, after changes in state and city laws allowed the City Council to give out raises each year without seeking approval from voters.

Next year, that could change.

City Council members have said that raises could return to the ballot for the first time since 1991, when voters rejected a raise by a 5-1 ratio. At that time, Wichita’s mayor and City Council members’ annual salaries were $12,500 and $7,500.

The six district seats on the City Council are technically part-time jobs. But Brandon Johnson, a council member since 2017, said they regularly put in more than 50 hours a week.

“Legally, it’s part-time. But we all work full-time,” Johnson said.

How much should they make?

Wichita’s council members’ salaries are about double what council members make in Tulsa and quadruple what they make in Oklahoma City.

But they’re less than half of the $95,000-plus that Sedgwick County commissioners will make this year. Council members also make less than half of what Mayor-elect Brandon Whipple will make in 2020.

Johnson said he’s not interested in making as much as the mayor but that he would like to see council members make between $55,000 and $65,000 annually. With that, the council members should be moved to full-time status, he said.

That could limit council members’ outside employment opportunities but also require them to dedicate their full attention to city business. Johnson said a lower salary coupled with the time commitment necessary to effectively serve the community limits who can participate in local politics to small business owners and others who are able to set their own schedules, far from the typical Wichitan.

“If we make it full-time, and classify it as such, I think it justifies the work that we’re already doing,” Johnson said.

Raises are one of several fundamental decisions about local government that voters could face in 2020. Questions about term limits and the number of council members could also land on the ballot, council members said in December.

“A lot of people think that we are overpaid,” Johnson said. “I’ve heard folks say that we’re underpaid. But when you look at everything we do — it’s not just a Tuesday meeting. It’s not just a Friday agenda review. We go to neighborhood meetings. We go engage our community. We go to the various events going on. Many of us serve on different committees.”

A larger conversation

What was historically a low-paid, part-time public-servant position has been expanded beyond the bounds of the City Hall board room. Council members now act as relationship builders with local businesses, neighborhood associations, universities, nonprofits and developers.

Outside of their formal roles as policy makers, council members serve on committees and offer guidance on important infrastructure projects such as the Northwest Water Treatment Facility and attend planning meetings for long-range projects such as the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan, which is working on a billion-dollar re-design of the city’s downtown on the east bank of the Arkansas River from Douglas to Kellogg.

Johnson said he thinks council positions deserve full-time attention. To do so, council members need a salary that doesn’t require a second or third job to maintain a reasonable standard of living.

“We aren’t complaining about it, it’s just highlighting the reality of the job,” Johnson said.

“We’re doing it because we love it. It’s not for the pay,” he said.

The salary boost would help make a City Council seat more attractive to people who can’t afford to quit their jobs to work on the council, Johnson said. While the council is his only job, others on the council divide their time, some working full-time outside jobs to supplement their council incomes.

But not everyone on the council agrees that moving to full-time is the best thing for council members.

“I willingly took this responsibility on knowing the pay and the amount of time that I would have to put into it, so it’s never been an issue for me,” Council member Bryan Frye said.

Frye has a full-time job as the senior director of investor relations with the Kansas Chamber. He’s also a minority owner of a small business. Going full-time could conflict with that.

“I think the flexibility of being part-time allows me the opportunity to create more income for myself if I desire, which is nice,” Frye said.

“But I also don’t feel this is a part-time commitment. It’s a full-time commitment,” he said.

Frye said he understands the argument for raising salaries, noting how many residents each council members is tasked with representing. Instead of raising salaries or moving to full-time, each council member’s load could be lightened if more council members are added, Frye said.

That’s another thing the council will consider this year, Frye said.

“Are part-time council members fully able to represent 60,000 people, which is the size of our districts. That can put stress and strain on the council members. There’s a lot of different variables, and I think it’s worthy of a community conversation to see what our citizens want,” Frye said.

Mayor-elect Brandon Whipple, who takes office Jan. 13, said he’s on board with looking at changes, too.

“It needs to be part of a bigger discussion,” he said.

Expanding roles?

City Council members have made moves in recent weeks to increase their role in the city’s council-manager form of government. Citing concerns that the City Council has become too reliant on city staff, Vice Mayor Jeff Blubaugh asked the council to change mayor and City Council term limits from two to three consecutive four-year terms.

“When you look at the big picture, we’re a multi-million-dollar business with over 3,000 employees, and the council is basically the board of directors with the mayor being the chairman and the city manager being the CEO,” Frye said.

“As a rule, the council has been the policy makers and allows the staff the ability to carry out the policy. So you start getting into how the staff is interpreting that policy and that’s where things get sideways. So how we continue to move this forward needs a lot of discussion,” he said.

The City Council tabled the term limit proposal in December. But it’s expected to come back to the bench again in 2020, along with council status and salaries and the number of council members. The answers to those questions could fundamentally change the shape of Wichita’s city government.

How the council started giving itself raises

Hardly anyone noticed, but buried in a controversial city decision to allow corporate cash into Wichita’s city elections was a change that allowed City Council members and the mayor to increase their salaries each year without explaining why.

Unlike state and federal legislative bodies, municipal governments receive little guidance from the federal government on what they should pay elected officials, and state laws vary widely.

Until 2015, Kansas law required city elected officials to have fixed salaries set by charter ordinance, which takes two months to go into effect and gives residents the option to circulate petitions to force the question onto the ballot. But that longstanding law was repealed, allowing Wichita’s council members to award themselves annual raises without that safeguard.

As soon as the law changed, Wichita’s mayor and City Council gave themselves a $3,000 raise, setting their base annual salaries at $40,000 and $90,000. They did that through a change to the city’s charter, which could have been challenged by voters.

The state Legislature had just passed a bill that changed local elections from the spring to the fall of odd-numbered years. That required Wichita’s City Council to change its charter ordinance for the election date. Instead of making only that rule change, Wichita’s City Council bundled it with several other adjustments to its charter ordinances.

Changes to chartered ordinances require a two-thirds majority and don’t go into effect until 61 days after they’re passed. The city must publish the ordinance once a week for two consecutive weeks in the official city newspaper. A petition by 10 percent of voters during a 60-day waiting period can force a special election that puts the change on the ballot.

The 2015 change that garnered the most attention was a change that allowed corporations and political action committees to spend money on Wichita’s elections.

But the city law change also included a provision that gave the mayor and City Council members a one-time raise. After that, unlike in years past, the mayor and City Council members would receive an automatic yearly cost-of-living raise.

Local blogger Bob Weeks noted at the time that “the effect ... is that the mayor and council members will receive annual pay increases without having to bother to vote to raise their salary.”

Then, in August of 2018, the City Council members untethered their salaries from the city charter and tied their raises to those of city employees, including any raises regular employees received based on merit.

Those changes have resulted in rapid salary increases for the both Wichita’s mayor and the City Council, with little public resistance. Council salaries have jumped 24.3 percent, and the mayor’s salary has climbed 18 percent since the state law was repealed in 2015.

The latest raise came Dec. 10 on the consent agenda, where routine and non-controversial items are typically approved in bulk with a single vote and without discussion.

City Council members and the mayor approved a 3.75-percent raise for themselves. The raise included a standard cost-of-living raise given to all non-exempt city employees and a merit-based step raise.

Johnson and Frye said they don’t see any problem with council members receiving the annual raises the way they do now.

“My understanding is it just increases salary at the same rate as city staff, and I’m fine with that,” Frye said.

Frye said he’s not against voters deciding council salaries but thinks they’re already been given a chance to change the direction of the City Council on Election Day.

“The public does have that opportunity for scrutinizing at the ballot box,” Frye said. “And every time there’s an election they can decide if that person is worthy of continuing in the seat and getting that salary.”

This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 5:01 AM.