Here’s a number that elicited gripes from City Council during hearings this week on the mayor’s latest budget proposal: 19.
Bibb is budgeting for a staff of 19 special assistants in his office this year, up from the 16 in last year’s budget.
“Special assistant” is a blanket title for various staff in the mayor’s office. Some handle media inquiries or scheduling. Others work on special initiatives on homelessness, traffic calming, tax-increment financing deals and the arts, for example. City Hall’s newly hired lobbyist is also a special assistant.
Bibb also employs several higher-level aides called “executive assistants” for such jobs as government relations, communications and Southeast Side development.
The pay in the mayor’s office isn’t half bad. The median salary is just below $101,000, including executive assistant jobs, special assistant positions and the chief of staff. Down the hall at City Council, the median pay for staff is almost $65,000, not including council members.
The mayor’s office provided a list of filled and unfilled positions, along with salaries, to City Council this week. Council shared a list of its own staff positions and pay with Signal Cleveland.
Compensation was a sticking point for Council President Blaine Griffin at Tuesday’s budget hearing session.
“We may need to reduce some of these special assistants,” he said. “They all get paid more than everybody over here, and this makes it tough for me to tell our staff, or our team, why we got a challenge with raising council people’s salaries and everything else.”
It’s almost routine now for council to poke and prod at mayor’s office spending during budget hearings. Bibb has previously defended his administration’s pay.
“Public service is a noble profession,” he told council during his first budget hearing back in 2022, “but I also believe good public servants deserve to be paid competitively so we can attract and have good-quality talent.”
The full mayor’s office budget is for 26 people at a cost of $4.1 million. In 2022, Bibb’s first year, his office was budgeted for $3.5 million but spent $2.4 million.
Council also shared a list that included nine staffers who work as executive or special assistants to the mayor but are stationed in other city departments. They’re not included in the mayor’s office budget.
In case you’re curious, City Council members make almost $94,000. The council president makes just shy of $104,000, and the mayor now pulls down $165,000.
Mayor’s stop in the Windy City
Hours after the mayor presented his budget to Cleveland City Council, he took a seat on stage at the University of Chicago for a panel discussion about the future of the Democratic Party.
Joining Bibb were former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and moderator David Axelrod, a former Obama advisor.
Asked about the number of Black men who voted for Donald Trump, Bibb recalled visiting a Lee-Harvard barbershop before the election last year. According to the mayor, a majority of the people in the shop said that they planned to vote for Trump.
Bibb said that they credited Trump for the 2020 stimulus checks that bore his name. The mayor said he tried to draw the connections between Joe Biden’s White House and federally funded road repair and anti-violence programs.
Only around 5.5% of voters in Ward 1, which includes Lee-Harvard, voted for Trump last year. But that’s a better GOP performance than in past elections. In 2016, Trump won just 1.8% in Ward 1.
The mayor advocated for more campaigning, all the time.
“If we want to win back the House, win back the Senate and win back the White House, we need to have a permanent organizing campaign every year,” he said. “There is no such thing as an off-year election. Every damn election matters now more than ever.”
