BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — With the City of Buffalo's budget now approved, next on the agenda for Buffalo's Common Council: salary raises. A salary review commission is recommending raises for the mayor, council members and other elected officials.
The proposed raise — 12.63 percent, which is a boost in pay that hasn't been seen since 2019.
At an intense finance committee meeting on Tuesday, some claim that this year's process of how the Citizen's Salary Review Commission was created, violated a number of rules.
Buffalo resident, Nathan Feist, created an analysis of the recommendation report.
"The Citizen's Salary Review Commission produced a report that includes a lot of inaccuracies that are fatal to its conclusions and so there's really no reason to adopt it on top of the fact that the process lacked transparency," Feist said.
Paul Wolf, president of the New York Coalition for Open Government, spoke at the committee meeting in oppositionto the salary recommendations.
"We think the process was flawed. We encourage you not to act on the recommendations because if you go forward with moving on the recommendations I think there will be a legal challenge," Wolf said, "Why not just scrap it this year, do it again in the future, the correct way?"
A member of the city's Corporation Counsel weighed in on Tuesday's meeting and said the creation of the commission has been addressed by the city's law department and would not further comment.
"According to Corporation Counsel, who we deferred to during the whole process, we didn't make any decisions without conferring with our law department," Council Member David Rivera said.
Council Member Ulysees Wingo added: "I am not surprised that we have folks who are so up in arms about increasing salaries to the employees of the City of Buffalo."
Council President Darius Pridgen said they followed the city charter the entire time.
"I'm not sure what the allegations are but, I don't think there's anything that the council does where there isn't somebody who believes it wasn't done correctly, it was done according to the charter," Pridgen said.
Common Council members have until June 15 to decide if city officials will get a pay raise.
