Rachel Foss (Reinvent Albany) Testifies on Salary Bill
Rachel Foss of Reinvent Albany supports the salary increases and commission reforms but opposes the automatic adjustment, recommending alternative backstops like multi-official commission appointments and additional ethics and financial disclosure reforms.
Good morning.
Thank you, Chair Brewer and other members of the Council, and thank you to Commissioner Weisbroad for his testimony.
My name is Rachel Foss.
I'm the Senior Policy Advisor for Reinvent Albany.
Reinvent Albany advocates for transparent and accountable government in New York.
We support competitive salaries for elected and appointed government officials because we want government service to appeal to a broad spectrum of qualified and diverse candidates.
We are encouraged the council reached an agreement with Mayor Mamdani to appoint the Quadrennial Commission, and we appreciate the commission's acknowledgement that our public testimony informed their report and recommendations.
This council hearing is another important opportunity to hear from the public about this legislation, so thank you for this hearing today.
In brief, here are our positions on Intro 2196.
We support the 18.2% salary increases for elected officials.
We also support the reforms to the commission process, such as restarting the commission in 2028, the third year of the term, and then every four years thereafter.
We support the one-time increase in 2026, and we also support increasing the time the commission has to issue a report to 120 days.
Like Citizens Union, we do not.
support, we oppose the automatic 8.25% or inflation adjustment if commissions are not formed.
And if there is a drafting error, certainly we encourage you to look at that.
The provision would effectively eliminate all public input regarding elected official salaries if a quadrennial commission is not formed.
Currently, the council must pass legislation to enact raises, and that triggers a public hearing.
And then the quadrennial commission itself typically holds hearings.
The commission process at the city level is one of the few opportunities for the public to discuss with policymakers not only salary levels, but important reforms like caps and bans on outside income, financial disclosure transparency, for example.
And this proposal may create an unintended consequence, an incentive for the mayor to not convene the commission because it is the path of least resistance.
Lastly, we support the comptroller publishing a table of elected official salaries.
This makes sense.
The bill could specifically say that this be published on the comptroller's website, just to make it a little bit more 2026 appropriate.
And lastly, we encourage the council to accompany salary increases with additional reforms to ethics and transparency.
In 2015, the council required disclosure forms of elected officials be published on the Conflicts of Interest Board website and eliminated LULUs.
The council should continue this important tradition of providing a benefit to the public while they provide a benefit to themselves.
We recommend the following.
The council should be required to provide reasons in writing when it modifies or does not accept the Quadrennial Commission recommendations.
The Quadrennial Commission endorsed this proposal in their report.
The council should remove mention of stipends in the charter.
This is a vestige of the past.
The commission flagged this for you to consider.
We support that.
The council, lastly, should make financial disclosure forms much more accessible.
The commission, Quad General Commission, said that our proposals in this area have merit, though felt they were outside their purview.
Fortunately, you, the council, have the authority to make this happen.
We support requiring elected officials'forms be available in an open data format.
We note that this would require COIB to upgrade its databases, which they told you at the budget hearing in June that they would like to do anyway.
We support requiring all financial disclosure statements from the time that elected officials are in office to be available on the COIB website.
Unfortunately, forms of former officials like Eric Adams from 2025 must still be requested from COIB, which triggers a notification requirement.
We think this needs to be corrected.
And lastly, we support removing the notification requirement for all financial disclosure statements altogether.
The state does not require this.
For financial disclosures, it's simply a FOIL request, and we think the city should treat it the same way.
Thank you for your consideration.
Thank you very much.
Other questions from anybody over here?
Okay.
I always have some.
So I have one question, which is this maybe I should have asked Carl Weiss.
But the mayor and the speaker both said they would be able to, or they don't want to take the full salary that was in the newspaper.
How would they do that?
Can you split that up?
I don't know.