What does it really cost to run the office of the mayor?
The question was raised with some testiness this week at City Council’s second hearing on Mayor Eric Papenfuse’s proposed 2015 budget, which includes a raise of $15,000 for the mayor’s personal assistant.
Papenfuse, in pleading for the raise, made an appeal to fairness. Former Mayor Linda Thompson, he said, had two assistants, one earning $40,000 per year and the other $60,000. His raise would bring his single assistant’s salary to a comparable $60,000, he said.
Council President Wanda Williams, however, rejected that argument, focusing instead on total salaries in the office, including a senior advisor post for “education, youth and civic engagement” at $70,000 per year.
Regardless of their titles, Williams argued, positions in the mayor’s office should be treated with the same austerity that council applied to past administrations.
All of this raises the difficult question of how to compare salaries across administrations. In the chart below, TheBurg has tallied the front-office salaries in city hall over the past decade, a period spanning three administrations.
As the chart shows, total front-office salaries, which approached $350,000 during the final four-year term of Mayor Stephen Reed, did drop significantly under Mayor Linda Thompson. Under the first two Papenfuse budgets, total salaries have climbed again, though not to the levels they reached under Reed.
These results, however, should be hedged with a few caveats.
First, front-office employees are not the mayor’s only support staff, and different administrations recruit different forms of assistance in other departments.
For example, in 2012, employees in the office of Mayor Linda Thompson had combined salaries of $180,000, the lowest total over the past 10 years. In the same year, however, but in a different department, Thompson had a chief of staff with a $110,000 salary, who in turn had an assistant with a salary of $41,000.
Papenfuse, though his 2014 budget tallied $265,000 in front-office salaries, hired no chief of staff this year. As a result, he and his assistant assumed many of the duties that would normally have fallen to the chief of staff role, as the mayor was quick to point out during this week’s hearing.
(The unfilled position, however, does appear in both the 2014 budget and the mayor’s proposal for 2015, at a $75,000 salary.)
Second, cuts and raises are always made relative to the budget for the prior year, and in the context of other spending priorities.
For instance, under the 2015 proposal, even though total front office salaries will climb, Papenfuse is making a net reduction in management salaries, offsetting a combined $68,869 in raises with $73,387 in cuts.
Third, other factors not immediately evident in the budget have a significant impact on both spending and workload each year.
In the last two years of the Thompson administration, for instance, the city received significant management assistance from the office of the state-appointed receiver, which had been installed to help navigate the resolution to Harrisburg’s debt crisis.
And to the extent the question over assistant salaries is about competitive compensation for skilled workers, other economic factors should be considered.
The figures in the chart have not been adjusted for inflation, because salaries for comparable positions have remained relatively stable over the 10-year period. Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that an assistant making $52,000 in 2006 made the equivalent of $61,000 in 2014 dollars.
As a final note, the front-office salaries provided for the Thompson administration in 2010 and 2011 were calculated differently than the other years, which relied on salaries in the approved budget documents (or proposed document, in 2015).
Thompson’s budgets for these years were formatted differently than in years prior, and it is not immediately clear what salaries were approved for which staff. Instead, the 2010 and 2011 totals relied on salary information available on the website of the city controller, which indicated which positions were actually filled during the year and at what salary level.
Despite these considerations, two meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the chart. In terms of front-office “assistant” jobs, neither Thompson nor Papenfuse approach Reed-era levels of spending. At the same time, Papenfuse is spending more in his front office than Thompson did, in large part because he created the new advisory position for education.
Whether that position is an assistant under a different name, however, is up for interpretation.
Office of the Mayor positions and salaries, 2006 – 2015:
Mayor Stephen Reed
2006
Mayor: $80,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor: $80,702
Senior Advisor to the Mayor / Director of Communications: $76,017
Assistant to the Mayor: $52,687
Special Assistant to the Mayor: $41,168
Total: $330,574
2007
Mayor: $80,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor: $80,869
Senior Advisor to the Mayor / Director of Communications: $76,887
Assistant to the Mayor: $53,259
Special Assistant to the Mayor: $41,437
Total: $332,452
2008
Mayor: $80,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor: $81,711
Senior Advisor to the Mayor / Director of Communications: $53,559
Assistant to the Mayor: $50,406
Special Assistant to the Mayor: $41,670
Total: $307,346
2009
Mayor: $80,000
Executive Assistant: $65,163
Assistant / Director of Communications: $50,875
Assistant to the Mayor: $53,925
Special Assistant to the Mayor: $44,740
Total: $294,703
Mayor Linda Thompson
2010*
Mayor: $80,000
Ombudsman / Assistant to the Mayor: $55,000
Senior Assistant / Director of Communications: $81,000 ($77,000)
Assistant to the Mayor: $40,000
Total: $256,000 ($252,000)
2011*
Mayor: $80,000
Assistant to the Mayor: $40,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor / Director of Communications: $77,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor: $60,000
Total: $257,000
2012
Mayor: $80,000
Assistant to the Mayor: $40,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor: $60,000
Total: $180,000
2013
Mayor: $80,000
Policy / Communications Director: $70,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor: $60,000
Assistant to the Mayor: $40,000
Total: $250,000
Mayor Eric Papenfuse
2014
Mayor: $80,000
Communications Director: $70,000
Senior Advisor to the Mayor for Education, Youth and Civic Engagement: $70,000
Special Assistant to the Mayor: $45,000
Total: $265,000
2015 (proposed)
Mayor: $80,000
Communications Director $70,000
Senior Advisor to the Mayor for Education, Youth and Civic Engagement: $70,000
Senior Assistant to the Mayor: $60,000
Total: $280,000
*2010 and 2011 figures rely on salaries from a compensation spreadsheet provided by the city controller’s office. All other figures are based on salaries in each year’s approved budget, except for 2015, in which case they come from the mayor’s pending budget proposal.
