City Council’s Latest Power Play: Giving Itself More Money

NEW YORK — Corey Johnson, the newly installed and fiercely vocal speaker of the New York City Council, wants to put his money where his mouth is.

Or rather, taxpayer money.

The speaker pushed a $17 million increase to the council’s own budget — a 27 percent increase and the largest in at least a decade — to help pay for more staff and support Johnson’s goal of establishing the city’s legislative body as a viable counterweight to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The increase, unveiled Thursday at a committee hearing that lasted less than five minutes, passed unanimously in the committee and was approved by the full council later in the day.

Spending on council staff and other operating expenses are not subject to mayoral veto, and Johnson said he had not discussed the size of the increases with de Blasio.

“It’s been very clear over the last 12 weeks that it’s a new day in the City Council,” Johnson said at a news conference before the vote. “I honestly am really proud of us. This is, again, us taking back our power.”

The new spending, which would raise the council’s budget to $81 million, mostly goes toward the salaries for up to 125 new staff members, an increase of more than a third in the head count of the council’s workforce. The new hires were slated to work for the various committees that have already been a priority for Johnson, including 20 for a newly constituted investigations division, 20 to work on recommendations for changes to the City Charter — a rival effort to one proposed by the mayor — and a large increase in the size of the council’s finance division, to 66 from 38. (Individual council members’ staff are not counted in the total.)

The increases come after several years under the former speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, in which spending on council staff rose steadily, but more slowly. When Mark-Viverito took over the council 2014, she increased spending by about 10 percent to $57 million, then to $64 million by the time she left last year.

The speaker’s office itself is set to increase its staff by four to 16, at a cost of $500,000, according to the budget. Johnson said those positions would include an extra “body man” — a person who helps with his personal needs — to cover what Johnson said was a seven-day-a-week schedule, and two positions he promised during the speaker’s race, one apiece for the council’s women’s caucus and its progressive caucus.

Budget analysts questioned the necessity, size and timing of the increases, which come amid concern over cuts from Washington and a possible economic downturn on the horizon. De Blasio, for his part, has highlighted the reserves his budget has amassed and the spending reductions at city agencies he has requested — even as his administration grew the budget substantially to $87 billion over his first term.

“It makes sense to beef up the council’s analytic capacity, but 130 new people is quite an increase,” said Carol Kellermann, president of the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, a city budget watchdog, adding that the council should have to show the necessity of that steep an increase in staffing. “If a city agency came in and asked for a 27 percent increase, the council would rightfully be quite skeptical.”

Johnson said there was “nothing in this budget that I’m uncomfortable with,” and added that some of the money was aimed at seeking better pay for council staffers whose salaries are often far lower than those across City Hall in the mayor’s office and at city agencies.

“One of the issues we have here at the council is that we lose staff,” he said.