City Hall’s bloat should not extend to mayor’s full-time pay
With 546,000 people, Albuquerque is six times larger than Santa Fe. Its residents pay two-term Mayor Richard J. Berry just under $104,000 a year after he asked for a 5 percent salary cut.
Now Santa Fe is preparing to add a full-time mayor to its payroll because of a city charter amendment that voters approved in 2014. A special commission that will set the base salary this week is floating the idea of paying Santa Fe’s mayor as much as $175,000 annually.
Members of the commission back up their argument for so high a salary with charts and graphs and unbearable speeches. They have established themselves not as experts on city operations but as tone-deaf defenders of a bloated bureaucracy.
Santa Fe already employs two top administrators responsible for daily city operations and longer-term planning. City Manager Brian Snyder makes almost $143,000 a year and Deputy City Manager Renée Martínez is paid
$130,000. The City Council and the sitting mayor added Martínez’s job to the executive tier knowing full well that the next mayor also would be a full-time administrator.
Whoever is elected mayor in March will have the lofty status of chief executive officer of the city. The commission has used that point as an attempt to justify a salary for the mayor of up to $175,000.
But the honchos who pushed for a full-time mayor liberally mentioned a figure of $74,000 when proposing what the salary should be. Now, because Snyder and Martínez already have sixfigure salaries, at least one member of the august commission says the mayor must make more.
“In my 20 years of professional recruiting experience, it is typical that a CEO is the most highly compensated person in an organization,” said commission member Shannon Moore Boniface.
She apparently didn’t bother checking the pay scale in Albuquerque.
Dozens of Mayor Berry’s underlings make more than he does. They include Albuquerque’s chief administrative officer, comparable to a city manager, who receives almost $190,000 a year. Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden makes $166,000. City Attorney Jessica Hernandez is paid $150,000. Eden and Hernandez resigned from executive jobs in Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration to take higher-paying positions with Albuquerque’s government.
Other cities that dwarf Santa Fe in population also pay lower salaries to their mayor than what the commission members, with straight faces, are vouching for as a reasonable high end.
The mayor of Denver, the largest city in the Rocky Mountain region, makes $172,000. Colorado Springs pays its mayor $103,000.
Santa Fe, with a population of about 85,000, doesn’t need a full-time mayor, plus a city manager and a deputy city manager. Three well-paid executives jockeying in City Hall create the risk of workers’ compensation lawsuits if they should trip over one another while looking for something to do.
Snyder and Renée Martínez are professionals. They probably will have to continue doing most of the work on finances, planning and administration unless Santa Fe is fortunate enough to elect a mayor such as Alan Webber.
Webber, who founded Fast Company magazine and later settled in Santa Fe, ran for governor in 2014 as a Democrat. He said he hasn’t given any thought to running for mayor, but he would be an inspired choice.
Even if residents knew Santa Fe would get someone of Webber’s quality as their first fulltime mayor, they would still be steamed by Boniface’s claim that the CEO must receive the highest salary. Most remember the discussion about a full-time mayor making $74,000 a year when the proposal went on the ballot. Plus, New Mexico has the highest unemployment rate in the country, and many taxpayers aren’t getting raises.
A related issue is that politicians get to handpick the city manager. They know what they’re getting ahead of time in terms of qualifications and talent. None of us know who will win the mayor’s job next year or what kind of mandate he or she will have. The incumbent, Javier Gonzales, was elected in 2014 with 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Electing mayors isn’t comparable to the installment of chief executives in other sectors.
Voters have created a monster by authorizing a full-time mayor who will have both legislative powers and enormous patronage powers that come with new authority to unilaterally fire the city manager, city attorney and city clerk. But the mayor’s salary should not be monstrous.
The commission should set the salary at $74,000, the amount most people expected. Then it can retire quietly for the good of the city.