Ahead of vote on salary raise, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao asks for lowest amount

OAKLAND — Hours before the City Council was expected to give Mayor Sheng Thao the highest possible salary raise she could receive under the city’s rules, the mayor publicly urged the council members to reverse course.

In a statement Tuesday morning, Thao asked instead for the lowest possible amount required by law: a bump of about $13,000 that would bring her annual salary to roughly $216,000.

“As a leader, I know this is in the best interest of the city’s fiscal health, and it is also the right thing to do,” Thao said in the statement.

If the council approves any higher amount, Thao said she would “reject it and refund” the excess money to “deliver services to our neighborhoods.”

Thao’s request came amid growing public pressure and scrutiny following a decision by a committee of city councilmembers last week to approve what would be a 78% salary hike — raising her compensation to just under $278,000 annually.

The local chapter of the NAACP, which has emerged as one of Thao’s most prominent public critics, had even scheduled a rally to call out the large proposed raise as “unwarranted.” After Thao requested a lower amount, the chapter on Tuesday released a statement lauding the mayor.

Thao is supposed to receive a salary increase due to a longstanding rule in the Oakland City Charter that requires the mayor to receive between 70% and 90% of the salaries earned by the city managers in the “three immediate higher and the three immediate lower cities” by population in California.

Her current salary is about $21,000 less than that of a subordinate staffer, a “special assistant to the mayor,” which prompted Human Resources Management Director Ian Appleyard to propose that Thao receive the full 90% pay rung.

Appleyard retired a day after the report was approved by the city administrator for the council’s consideration.

Thao’s request to receive the 70% pay rung would still keep her among the highest-paid mayors in California — last year, it would have made her the fourth-highest, behind the mayors of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, per state data.

During the 3-1 vote last week by a council committee to set up the larger vote on Tuesday, Councilmember Janani Ramachandran dissented, citing a historic financial deficit that had recently led city officials to approve a series of budget cuts and department mergers.

And although he voted to approve the highest salary raise, Councilmember Kevin Jenkins called for the city’s independent Public Ethics Commission, and not the council, to approve future salary raises.

On Tuesday, Thao took up the idea herself, saying she would work on a ballot measure to cement the process in law. “Reforming our systems and our government is my mandate and I take it seriously,” she said in her statement.

“It is my belief that we do not have to continue to do things the way they’ve always been done, and under my administration we’re not going to,” she added. “Oaklanders deserve better.”

The City Council was scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. Tuesday, with the mayor’s salary raise on its consent agenda — which is often approved without discussion — to start.