As Columbus attempts to rein in the size of employee raises, do elected officials at City Hall deserve pay bumps?
A citizens commission is recommending the city’s top elected officials get raises in 2030 ranging from 13% to 32% on top of their annual cost of living adjustments. If implemented by Columbus City Council, the Columbus mayor’s salary would surpass $300,000 and council members would earn six figures for a job that has historically been considered part-time.
In a routine process that occurs every four years, the city’s citizens commission on elected official compensation submitted its 2026 report on April 12 to Columbus City Council. The recommendations are for 2030 through 2033. There is currently no timeline for when it will come before council for a vote but Columbus City Council President Pro Tempore Rob Dorans anticipates it will be several months.
Dorans, who will have to bring the legislation to council as he chairs the Workforce, Education & Labor Committee, said this isn’t a top priority for him and he doesn’t foresee himself voting for a 32% raise.
“The committee that came together took this very seriously so I don’t want to reject their findings outright but that is a significant proposed increase for folks at council,” Dorans said. “Even while these raises would not go into effect for a number of years, obviously while we’re talking about the budget being difficult, it’s probably not the right moment to be handing out raises to elected officials.”
The commission is recommending these raises in 2030:
Calculating precisely how much officials would be paid with those increases isn’t possible. Their annual cost of living raises are tied to an index, and the commission’s raises would be based on the elected officials’ 2029 salaries.
Per the city charter, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther and Columbus City Council appointed five commissioners to hold a series of meetings and issue a report with recommendations.
Columbus City Council can amend the recommendations. Last go-around in 2022, council lowered some of the recommendations before passing them. For example, in 2022, the commission suggested a 40% raise for the council president in 2026 and the city council approved a 13% raise instead.
This go-around comes as the city faces a tight operating budget. In light of this, during a February budget hearing, officials in Ginther’s administration testified that the city hoped to negotiate 2% raises with city employees. That’s lower than the 4.5% to 5% raises that the unions have negotiated in recent years.
The commissioners appointed this year to issue compensation recommendations were Christopher Moses, a vice president at the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium and Ginther’s former director of human resources; Andrea Blevins, former Columbus City Council Clerk; Liz Caslin-Turner, a former candidate for the Columbus City Schools Board of Education; Alyvia Johnson, a senior manager at AEP; and Monica L. Womack, former chief in the Ohio Department of Development’s Minority Business Division.
How do Columbus elected official salaries stack up?
The commissioners wrote in their report that they aimed to compensate the elected officials at or above the market rate of compensation in peer cities.
The Columbus mayor’s salary is already well above the median salary ($196,802) the commission looked at in 16 peer cities without city managers. For example, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval makes $121,291 and council members there make $60,645.
Councilmember salaries range widely in peer cities, from about $172,000 in Washington, D.C., to $25,000 in Forth Worth, Texas. The median among peer cities in the commission’s report was $78,701, below Columbus’ compensation rate.
The commission report notes that the role of Columbus City Council has evolved from what may once have been viewed as part-time into one that is effectively full-time in practice.
Currently, most of the eight regular council members hold outside employment. Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin treats the role like a full-time job and doesn’t have other employment. His compensation is already above the median ($94,311) in peer cities that the commission looked at.
This story was updated with additional information.
Government and politics reporter Jordan Laird can be reached at jlaird@dispatch.com. Follow her on X, Instagram and Bluesky at @LairdWrites.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus commission recommends 32% raise for council, 18% for mayor
Reporting by Jordan Laird, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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