A Tale of Two Councils

The D.C. Council:

Unhappy with your salary? You can give yourself a raise if you serve on the D.C. Council, one of the most self-absorbed, chutzpah-filled legislative bodies in the region.

Whatever the 13-member council wants, it gets. Right now the members want more money -- lots of it.

They've been thinking about a salary hike for months, but they didn't act on their self-enrichment plan until after the election. Now safely beyond the reach of the voters, the council has decided the time is ripe to get it while the getting is good.

Unfortunately, the members made a little misstep last week. They had planned to use the post-election legislative session to portray their salary increase as an "emergency" and attach it to an emergency bill to fund the transition teams for Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty and council Chairman-elect Vincent Gray. (Fenty's team gets $250,000 and Gray's, $150,000, all public dollars, no questions asked.)

The council had hoped to enact the raises without a public hearing. The transition funding bill passed without dissent, but the pay boost stalled when civic watchdog Dorothy Brizill blew the whistle and a Post editorial blasted the money grab.

The council's deviousness was matched only by the excessive amount its members tried to award themselves. Their scheme called for the mayor's salary to be boosted from $152,000 to $200,000, the council chairman's from $142,000 to $190,000 and the salaries of the 12 other council members all the way from $92,530 to $140,000 -- a mind-blowing 51 percent raise.

Mind you, under the Home Rule Charter, only the mayor and the council chairman are considered full-time employees.

Caught in the act, they tabled the raises. But greed dies hard. The measure is coming back on Tuesday for a public hearing. It will be a pro forma affair, because the council is determined to pass the increase this year. Why?

The law prevents members from receiving raises during the same term in which the raises are voted on. Delay the vote until next year, and today's members can't pocket the loot. Hence the need to get the dastardly deed done now.

Their justification for making themselves the highest-paid council members in the region is as flimsy as their need to draw huge salaries. They say the District functions as a state as well as a city.

How absurd! What state must send its enactments to Congress for final approval?