Setti tells Dems to take lump on bump
Ex-Newton mayor took own big hike
Likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate Setti Warren is urging his party’s lawmakers to spike their controversial payraise package — a call that comes just a few years after the former Newton mayor successfully pushed to give himself a 28 percent salary hike.
Warren’s words are drawing attention, partly because pay raises are dominating the conversation on Beacon Hill, but also because he is moving closer to announcing he’s running against Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, which one supporter said he expects to happen “shortly.”
Warren’s efforts to raise his profile included a statement yesterday calling on state lawmakers to flip their votes and “put a pause” on the pay raise package. The hike, swiftly passed after a pro-forma hearing, raises lawmakers’ stipends, the salaries of constitutional officers and the pay of judges.
“In principle I agree that legislators and other elected officials should be paid a reasonable wage, but the process of rushing this legislation through has been unseemly,” Warren said.
Baker vetoed the bill, but lawmakers, who passed it with veto-proof majorities, are expected to move to override it next week.
Warren in the past week has weighed in on the state budget and Baker’s State of the State address. Once he added pay raises to that list, it quickly drew attention to his own moves as mayor.
He pushed a measure to hike his salary by roughly $27,000 to $125,001 as part of a city budget proposal that was ultimately approved by Newton’s aldermen in 2012. And similar to state lawmakers’ push to boost their pay, the recommendation to raise the mayor’s salary came from a separate commission, which called for the hike in 2005, about five years before Warren took office.
Kevin Franck, a Warren spokesman, said the former mayor wasn’t available for an interview, but in apparent anticipation of such questions, he quickly emailed a “fact sheet,” which emphasized that Warren has criticized the process of the pay raises, not the hikes themselves.
“Mayor Warren’s raise was recommended by an independent commission in 2005, but he didn’t push for it until the city was in good enough financial shape to pay for it,” the email read.
Warren has said only that he’s seriously considering a gubernatorial run. But Phil Johnston, a former state Democratic Party chairman, yesterday publicly endorsed him as a “great candidate,” signaling a formal campaign announcement is close.
“We’re into a very serious campaign,” Johnston said in a Boston Herald Radio appearance, “or we will be shortly.”