City council pay raises no one is discussing: Oakland charter reform
Oakland city council is set to ask voters to give substantial pay raises to elected officials — yet this change has been largely absent from the charter reform conversation.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Oakland Report’s charter reform series is exploring Oakland’s city charter and how it potentially could change — a question that Oakland voters may be asked on the ballot in November. This installment is focused on the city council’s consideration of increasing its own pay through the charter reform mechanism. Read all eleven Charter Reform series articles.
Council set to vote on a change that would give council members up to 125% pay raises
City Council meeting, June 16, 2026, agenda item #5.2
Oakland city council is set to vote on a change to the Oakland city charter that would give the city council members up to 125 percent pay raises. The pay raises would come through a ballot measure that would require voter approval.1
Oakland Report readers will recall that city council is currently negotiating with its public employee unions who are demanding pay raises, even after the council previously awarded city employees cumulative 79% raises over ten years, increasing their pay 2.5 times higher than inflation during that same period.
Those same unions recently campaigned for a new parcel tax on Oakland homes and businesses to extract even more tax revenue from Oaklanders. Voters rejected the new tax, Measure E.
Meanwhile, the city council on Friday declared a state of “extreme fiscal necessity” for the fourth year straight in order to divert restricted, voter-approved tax funds to other purposes.
The city’s finance department has forecast a structural budget shortfall of $115 million to $135 million annually through 2030.
Councilmembers could receive salary and benefits far above the area median income
The proposal from Mayor Barbara Lee’s hand-picked “working group” on charter reform recommends amending the Oakland city charter to make city council positions full-time, prohibit outside employment, and set compensation through a benchmark survey of other “strong-mayor” cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego.
Oakland’s current city council salary is $108,803, and is set to rise to $114,678 on July 1, 2026.2
By comparison, the median household income (which often includes multiple earners) in Oakland is approximately $102,000.3
San Diego pays its council members a salary of $183,545,4 and Los Angeles pays $244,727.5
If the proposed Oakland city council member raises are approved by voters in a charter amendment, city council members’ salaries would increase 69 percent if matched to San Diego council pay, and up to 125 percent if matched to Los Angeles council pay.
Los Angeles council members are the highest-paid municipal lawmakers in the nation. This high pay is largely due to a long-standing policy linking their salaries to those of municipal judges, resulting in salaries far exceeding peers in cities like New York and San Francisco.6
Read this related article:
The council is set to approve the charter reform measure tomorrow — pay raise included
On Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to vote on a resolution that would place mayor Barbara Lee’s charter reform measure on the November 3 general election ballot.
The charter reform measure has been discussed almost entirely as a referendum on executive power, that is, whether Oakland should become a “strong-mayor” city.
Largely absent from that debate is the eighth of the measure’s nine stated changes: a provision that would hand the Public Ethics Commission (PEC) the authority to reset how much council members are paid.7
The PEC’s membership is appointed by the mayor, city attorney, city auditor, and by the PEC itself.8
The measure would make council service formally full-time, prohibit outside employment, and replace the council’s current cost-of-living-only salary mechanism with a benchmarking process tied to “comparable full-time public officials.”9
Oakland Report previously reported that, depending on the “comparable” cities chosen, Oakland council members’ pay could increase by as much as 125 percent, raising their total compensation up to an estimated $318,145 per year once full-time benefits are included.10
No set limits on city council members’ pay
“Other cities use clear benchmarks: for example, Los Angeles ties council salaries to municipal judges’ pay.”
— Mayor’s Charter Reform Working Group report
Under the proposed charter language, beginning in 2027 the PEC would set council member salaries every two years, benchmarked to the pay of full-time city council members and county supervisors in “comparable” California jurisdictions.
The change also would apply cost-of-living adjustments every two years, capped at five percent.11
A parallel provision would formally assign the PEC the job of also setting salaries for the mayor, city attorney, and city auditor.12
The current council member salary is $108,803, and is scheduled to rise to $114,678 on July 1, 2026 — already well above Oakland’s median household income (which often includes multiple earners) of about $102,000.13
The ballot measure itself does not name the comparison cities; it leaves the selection to the PEC. But the mayor’s hand-picked “working group” that drafted the proposal — which was composed primarily of people with long-standing personal and political ties to mayor Barbara Lee — offered clear clues about which cities it had in mind.
The “working group’s” report calls for a salary survey of similarly sized strong-mayor cities, and specifically cites Los Angeles as a benchmark city for council pay.
Furthermore, their report repeatedly holds up Los Angeles and San Diego as the strong-mayor cities Oakland should emulate.14
For council members weighing a measure that would hand the mayor sweeping new authority while reducing their own, naming Los Angeles and San Diego — cities that are far larger in population than Oakland — appears to signal what full-time status could be worth: a financial incentive for council members to approve the other elements of the charter reform measure that reduce the council’s and professional staff’s power and transfer it to the mayor.
With full-time benefits, the total compensation increases by 20–40% – and council members’ total compensation could exceed $300,000 per year
If voters approve the proposal to designate Oakland city council members as full-time employees, Oakland would also pay health premiums up to the Bay Area Kaiser rate ($3,039 per month for family coverage), plus CalPERS pension contributions, insurances, and payroll taxes.15
Including full-time benefits at current costs, Oakland city council members could receive up to $318,145 per year in total compensation, if their salaries are set to the Los Angeles benchmark.
If the charter reform is approved and salaries are benchmarked to other large cities, the total annual employer cost per Oakland council member will increase substantially. Assuming an eight-member council, the total fiscal impact varies based on the chosen benchmark:
As of July 2024, the annual base salary for Oakland city council members currently is $108,803, which is higher than the area median income of $102,000.16
Council member salary currently is adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the preceding two years, with a maximum increase of five percent per year.17
The City of Oakland pays its full-time employees 100 percent of the monthly premium up to the Bay Area Kaiser rate, which for 2026 is a maximum of $3,039.04 per month for family coverage.18
Additionally as full-time employees, council members would participate in the state retirement system, CalPERS, which offers lifetime defined-benefit pension plans. The city makes substantial employer contributions to its employees’ pension plans, calculated as a percentage of payroll — a long-term financial liability to taxpayers. Employee contribution rates vary by tier, such as 13 percent for Tier III in the city’s 2026 Benefits Matrix.19
The official misdirection: a ‘process,’ not a raise
The “mayor’s working group’s” proposal characterizes its pay raise recommendation as “not intended to automatically increase salaries,” but as a way to create a “fair, transparent, and standardized” compensation process.
It also asserts that the full-time pay is an “equity” measure that would allow people who are not already well-to-do to serve.20
The mayor’s office has described the charter reform package as a fix for a “fragmented” chain of command.21
Notably, the mayor already has exclusive hiring and firing authority over the city administrator, the city’s professional chief executive who oversees all city employees, operations and services, and is ultimately responsible for the city’s police response, road paving, illegal dumping, and every other aspect of city services.
The claim that the proposed change is “not intended to automatically increase salaries” is misleading, because it would, by design, result in potentially significant pay raises for the mayor and council.
It stands to reason that benchmarking Oakland elected official’s pay to larger, higher-paying cities — as strongly implied by the “mayor’s working group’s” recommendations, and implemented by a PEC which is partly appointed by the same elected officials who stand to receive those pay raises — is likely to produce substantial pay raises.
Notably, the pay raise element of the proposed charter reform measure is not tied to Oakland’s own budget condition, nor to the compensation the city pays its own employees.
A deafening silence
To date, neither the mayor nor any council member have offered any substantive public remarks or debate about the pay raise provision — its potential size, its timing, or its justification.
The discussion at city hall has almost exclusively centered on executive authority and oversight. The compensation change has passed without a defense, a challenge, or an explanation from the officials it would benefit.
One thing to watch at tomorrow’s council discussion is whether the mayor or any council member is willing to say, on the record, that their own performance warrants a raise of this magnitude at a moment when the city is again declaring “extreme fiscal necessity” and confronting structural budget deficits exceeding $115 million per year.
Oakland voters will be asked to approve a single charter reform measure bundling executive power, council oversight tools, full-time service, and a new salary mechanism into one yes-or-no question.
The pay provision is the part of that bundle with the most direct financial benefit to the people advancing it — and the part that has been explained to the public the least.
The “mayor’s working group” offered no specific dollar amounts, and no cap on how high city council and mayoral pay could rise under their proposal, yet there has been scant attention paid by either the city council or the local media to identifying these specifics.
It is reasonable to assume that avoiding discussion of the proposed pay raises for elected officials — a major element of the charter reform proposal — is a conscious strategy to avoid drawing attention or triggering public opposition to the measure, because giving pay raises to elected officials is generally unpopular with voters.2223
The result is that the one element of the measure that would directly benefit the officials voting to place it on the ballot has received the least scrutiny.
Read this related article:
Why are pay raises included in the charter reform proposal?
Taken in the context of Oakland’s long history of corruption, for example the recent indictment of former mayor Sheng Thao on federal corruption charges, the proposal to increase council members’ compensation raises a number of ethical questions:
If city council members’ livelihoods depend on re-election, does that incentivize them to be even more susceptible to influence by special interests that can help them keep their lucrative jobs and accrue more benefits, not to mention the political powers of their office?
How will the prohibition against outside employment be monitored and enforced? What if they take outside work anyway – who would take the action to enforce violations? If council members break the rule, would Oaklanders just have to wait until the next election, or try to mount an expensive recall campaign? Would their council pay be suspended? Would city council members take action against their council colleagues? Or would literally nothing happen?
Is giving council members substantial pay raises really just a political play to prevent the council members from actively opposing the charter reform proposal’s key element of giving the mayor more power and the city council less power, by promising the council members a big financial payday?
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City of Oakland. "Proposed ballot measure to reform Oakland's city charter." Oakland City Council meeting, June 16, 2026, agenda item #5.2. https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=8005387&GUID=F62A0029-E929-44D7-9A49-6E71BA7B98AB&Options=&Search=
City of Oakland. “Oakland city council salary adjustment.” Public Ethics Commission meeting agenda, Mar. 18, 2026, agenda item #5. https://www.oaklandca.gov/files/assets/city/v/1/public-meetings/public-ethics-commission/2026/03-18-2026-pec-regular-meeting-agenda.pdf
Census Reporter. “Oakland, California profile data.” Accessed Mar. 26, 2026. https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0653000-oakland-ca/
City of San Diego. “Ordinance No. 21956.” May 13, 2025. https://docs.sandiego.gov/council_reso_ordinance/rao2025/O-21956.pdf
Mejia, Kenneth. “Los Angeles city officials pay rate.” Los Angeles City Controller’s Office, accessed Mar. 26, 2026. https://controllerdata.lacity.org/stories/s/City-Elected-Officials-Pay-Rate/t9w5-r8bn/
Public CEO contributors. “L.A. City Council earns highest salary in nation: Is the system giving too much?” Public CEO, Accessed Mar. 26, 2026. https://www.publicceo.com/2009/04/los-angeles-city-council-earn-highest-salary-in-nation-is-the-system-giving-too-much
Ibid. Charter reform recommendation, item #8.
City of Oakland. “About the Public Ethics Commission.” Public Ethics Commission webpage, accessed Jun. 15, 2026. https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/Boards-Commissions/Public-Ethics-Commission/About-the-Public-Ethics-Commission
City of Oakland. “Resolution and attachment 1 — proposed charter amendment,” Oakland City Council meeting, file #26-0692, sections 204 and 202, Jun. 16, 2026. https://oakland.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15447772&GUID=ABEAA173-609E-4920-A9AD-1D5A8187B5DD
Montana, Alex. “City council seeks a pay raise of up to 125% – which would be among the highest in the nation.” Oakland Report, Mar. 26, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/20260326-city-council-seeks-a-pay-raise-of
Ibid. Charter reform recommendation, attachment 1, section 202 (council salaries).
Ibid. Charter reform recommendation, attachment 1, section 300 (the mayor) and section 603(c) (elected official salary increases).
Ibid. Montana, Alex.
Mayor’s charter reform working group. “Strengthening Oakland’s governance structure.” Office of Mayor Barbara Lee, Jan. 29, 2026. https://oakland.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15447770&GUID=7CEFABC4-822E-484B-8FB1-D82E72225F26
City of Oakland. “Summary of benefits, year 2026.” Accessed Mar. 26, 2026. https://www.oaklandca.gov/files/assets/city/v/1/human-resources/documents/working-for-oakland/employee-benefits/benefit-documents/2026-benefits-matrix.pd
City of Oakland. “City council salaries.” Accessed Mar. 26, 2026. https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/Boards-Commissions/Public-Ethics-Commission/Open-Government/City-Council-Salaries
Heidorn, Nicholas. “City council salary adjustment as required by law for the March 13, 2024, PEC meeting.” Public Ethics Commission, Feb. 28, 2024. https://cao-94612.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/documents/10-Memo-Reso-City-Council-Salary-Adjustment-with-headers.pdf
Ibid. City of Oakland - Summary of Benefits.
City of Oakland. “Employee benefits.” Accessed Mar. 26, 2026. https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/Working-for-Oakland/Employee-Benefits
Ibid. Proposed ballot Measure to reform Oakland’s city charter, recitals on compensation.
Office of Mayor Barbara Lee. “Charter Reform.” Charter reform website, accessed June 15, 2026. https://www.mayorbarbaralee.com/charter-reform
Mercer, Marsha. “Voting to raise their own pay puts state lawmakers in a bind.” Stateline, Apr. 13, 2023. https://stateline.org/2023/04/13/voting-to-raise-their-own-pay-puts-state-lawmakers-in-a-bind/
Mahtesian, Charles. "Politicians want a raise. do they deserve one?" Governing, Jan. 16, 2024. https://www.governing.com/politics/politicians-want-a-raise-do-they-deserve-one
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Well, golly, shouldn't we reward their great success?