The City Council has voted itself a hefty pay raise, increasing base salary to $112,500 from $90,000. That’s a 25 percent increase.

Now contain yourself before you start yelling. Let’s at least figure out whether we should really be upset, why and what exactly anyone should be upset about.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn defended the action declaring, ‘’I have never seen a legislative body which works harder than the New York City Council.’’

Not one for such broad generalizations, I am inclined to agree with Quinn that by and large, this group of Council members works hard. Comparing them to other legislative bodies accomplishes little – we wouldn’t hold the past performance of the State Legislature as a yardstick for anything but failure. But we admire the effort put forth by the Queens Council delegation. Most of them are pretty full-time and, we believe, put in perhaps more than a 40-hour work week. We also believe their work product to be impressive.

Their constituent service, their legislation, their community advocacy has served the people well. And when employees perform well, raises may be in order.

There are, however, three “good government” issues that should have been considered as part and parcel of salary increases.

There are those “lulus!” Stipends, rewards, bonuses, extras – call them what you will – given to committee chairs and Council leadership. They range from $4,000 to $28,000 and are given to all but five of the present Council members (that’s 46 lulus out of 51 members). They average around $10,000 and are controlled by the Speaker.

Having the Speaker able to reward members with bonuses is counter-democratic. Members are elected to represent their constituencies, to perform for city government and not be at the mercy of an omnipotent leader. We’ve seen what such leadership has achieved in our State; we must not hand the Speaker any more tools that can be used to coerce a Council member.

Nothing here suggests that Quinn has utilized the $479,000 she gave away in lulus in a terrible manner. We just think the money excessive, the concept undemocratic and all members of the Council should receive the same pay. That’s how it is in Congress. Committee chairs get no extra stipends. As a matter of fact, based on our knowledge, the practice of disparity of salaries among members is uncommon in legislative bodies.

According to the City Charter, Mayor Bloomberg appointed an advisory panel on the subject of compensation of elected and top appointed city officials, and while they recommended pay increases, they opposed the concept of lulus: “Outside of New York, almost no other city council or state legislature distributes such stipends.”

The panel also suggested that outside employment by Council members required further examination. We agree. The new salary, without the lulu, may not be high enough to attract a quality full-timer to public service. However, there is no requirement that a Council member be full-time and some, including Queens’ David Weprin, earn in excess of $200,000 from their other jobs.

In general, to earn those types of bucks, one either spends lots of time or, one might suspect, uses their office to bring questionable influence to whoever is writing the checks. We believe the Speaker should have, at a minimum, commissioned an independent study of outside employment guideline options before moving ahead with raises.

Finally, we find it discomforting that legislators vote for their own raises and believe that a member should be required to stand for re-election before a salary increase they voted for is added to their paycheck. This however, is the least important of the three issues.

Queens Council member Tony Avella was the most vocal opponent of the increase. He has in the past refused his lulu and unsuccessfully introduced amendments eliminating them if the pay raise was granted. He and Hiram Monserratte were the only two Queens members voting against the raises, which passed the Council overwhelmingly.

Voting yourself a raise should be an awkward matter. Reforming government by eliminating lulus and limiting outside income is a complex and difficult matter.

While we don’t oppose higher salaries for Councilmembers, sadly, they took the easy way out.

Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.