Mayor’s salary up to LR board

Vote on pay raise Tuesday

A proposal to give Little Rock’s mayor an almost $20,000 pay raise will go before the Little Rock Board of Directors on Tuesday night for a vote.

The proposal says that the city is out of compliance with an Arkansas law that requires a full-time mayor in a city manager form of government to make a comparable salary to the highest-paid municipal official with similar duties. The board postponed discussion and a vote on the measure after several city directors became hung up on the meaning of the word comparable last month.

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, who recused himself during previous discussions of his salary, said Thursday that he did not want to comment on the coming vote.

As of last week it looked like several city directors might move to postpone the vote again because they were waiting for answers to questions raised at previous board meetings. City Attorney Tom Carpenter issued two opinions in the last 10 days to answer some of those concerns, but some areas remained hazy, he wrote.

“It should be noted that there really are no clear-cut answers,” he wrote in an opinion issued June 28. “The statutory language ‘comparable’ is not exact. This means that the [Board of Directors] acts with a certain amount of discretion.”

Ward 4 City Director Brad Cazort made the proposal for the pay raise, the first since the mayor’s position became full time. After a special election in which the full-time mayor proposal won with 61 percent of the vote in August 2007, the mayor’s salary was set even with the city manager’s salary at that time.

The city manager and other high-ranking city officials have received raises since that vote, but the mayor’s salary has stayed at $160,000. The proposal before the board would bump the salary to be even with City Manager Bruce Moore’s $179,208 salary.

The proposal would also increase the mayor’s benefits and car allowance to be even with those of the city manager position.

Little Rock is the only city in Arkansas with a full-time mayor and full-time city manager in what is considered a strong mayor form of government where the mayor is the city executive and the manager oversees day-to-day operations.

That means the state law that requires the salaries to be comparable has not been tested by any other Arkansas city.

Some of the other questions raised by city directors included whether it was fair that a new mayor would make as much as an experienced city manager, whether the Arkansas statute mandates that the mayor and city manager have the same benefits and salary, and would the board be subject to litigation if it took no action on the salary.

Many of Carpenter’s answers were, “There is no clear answer.”

Carpenter said the 2007 vote made the salary increase necessary and state law mandates that the city board decide that salary. He said not approving a raise for the mayor could open the city up to litigation depending on how a court defines comparable, but in his opinion the current disparity between the mayor’s salary and the city manager’s could be enough to consider the board out of compliance with the state law.

According to a salary study by the Arkansas Municipal League, Stodola is the highest-paid mayor in the state of Arkansas, but Little Rock is also the largest city by population.

Regionally, Stodola’s salary is also one of the highest, outpacing the mayors of Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Austin, Texas, according to 2012 salary information from those cities. The Memphis mayor’s salary for 2013 is $162,925 because of a voluntary pay cut to deal with that city’s financial issues.

But Stodola’s pay is also at the top of the pack for other state capital cities with similarly sized populations. Stodola handed out city board and city council salary information for seven other state capitals when the Little Rock Board of Directors was considering whether to approve a $6,000 annual pay increase for city directors in May.

The board approved the pay raise, which bumped the city directors’ salaries from $12,000 to $18,000 and added a $3,000 annual expense stipend, based on that information.

Calls to the human resource departments at those cities - Baton Rouge; Boise, Idaho; Jackson, Miss.; Tallahassee, Fla.; Providence, R.I.; and Des Moines, Iowa - showed that six in addition to Little Rock have full-time mayors, and of those mayors, Stodola was paid the most.

The next highest salary was $135,447 for the mayor of Baton Rouge And the lowest salary for those full-time mayors was in Tallahassee, Fla., where the mayor makes $72,127.

In Tallahassee, however, the mayor is considered a weak mayor, meaning he is one vote on the council and does not have direct authority over the city manager. Des Moines, which has a part-time mayor, also has a weak mayor form of government.

In Baton Rouge, Providence and Jackson, the city administrator is a member of the mayor’s staff. Only in Providence is that administrator paid more than the mayor, but the Providence mayor also took a voluntary pay cut in recent years to deal with financial issues.

Boise does not have a city manager position. The city council recently made the move to raise the mayor’s salary, which will increase in January to $109,766 - Boise’s first mayoral raise since 2004.

In Richmond, Va., the mayor’s salary is capped at $125,000 by city ordinance and the Richmond city manager made nearly $213,000 as of a 2012 salary study.

According to a job description from Little Rock’s Human Resources Department, the Little Rock city manager’s job duties include:

Providing direct oversight for all city departments, including appointment and removal of employees and developing standards and reviewing job performance of those departments.

Creating and implementing goals and objectives for the city in collaboration with the mayor and board of directors.

Representing the directors in the enforcement of those goals and obligations.

Contracting for purchase of supplies and construction.

Advising the board on financial matters and future needs of the city and developing a budget, monitors and reports on finances

Developing relationships with neighborhood and community groups, the media, business community and other constituencies.

Attending city board meetings and representing the city on several designated boards and commissions, at conferences, programs and community events.

The board of directors passed an ordinance in June 2007 that made way for a citywide referendum on whether to give the mayor full-time status and to give the position veto power over board votes.

The ordinance outlined the mayor’s new duties as the city executive, including:

Hiring or firing the city manager and city attorney, provided the board does an annual review of those offices.

Nominating and filling vacancies on boards, authorities and commissions with the input of those ward directors and with final board approval.

Helping the city manager prepare the budget, which would then be administered by the manager.

Directing the manager in his other duties.

Several city directors asked follow-up questions that triggered a second opinion from Carpenter, dated July 3. Those questions included whether a new city manager hired at a lower salary would mean the mayor’s salary would drop as well, whether the mayor should be excluded from raise decisions for the city manager since their salaries are tied to one another, whether the board could change the mayor’s salary if a new mayor is elected, and whether the salary ordinance could be referred to the voters for approval.

Carpenter wrote that a sitting mayor’s salary could not be lowered without the mayor’s consent and that the mayor’s salary could not be changed based on a new person being elected. He also wrote that the mayor does not unilaterally set the manager’s salary, so he did not see a conflict.

He said the answer to whether the salary question could be referred to the voters was “not clear.”

Reader poll

Do you think Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola should get a $19,208 pay raise?

  • Yes 19%
  • No 75%
  • It doesn't matter to me. 6%

16 total votes.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/08/2013

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