Report from Westwood

Enquirer reporter Gregory Korte filed this report from Tuesday night's Westwood Concern meeting:

Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory defended his proposal to increase the top pay for political appointments at City Hall on the eve of tonight’s vote on the ordinance.

At a meeting of Westwood Concern Tuesday night, Mallory argued that he needed to pay his chief of staff, Carla Walker, $76,000 a year to stay competitive. His ordinance would raise the maximum pay for his top legislative aide from $64,900 to $95,500 a year.

“Here’s what’s important. We talk a lot in this city about trying to attract and retain young, bright people,” he said.

“I have a philosophy of only hiring people who are smarter than me, and I feel real strange about hiring people smarter than me, and then paying them less than I make,” said the mayor, who draws an annual salary of $111,402 a year. “If anything, I set that salary too low.”

Mallory said his survey of comparably sized cities found that other mayors have staffs of 12 to 28 people, making between $97,000 to $160,000 a year.

Cincinnati, with a council-manager form of government, has historically had small mayoral staffs that were paid at the same rate as council legislative aides. Other than the city manager and the clerk of council, those aides are the only employees at City Hall hired directly by elected officials.

Many of those aides are paid in the $30,000 to $40,000 range. Westwood resident Sharon Lewis told Mallory Tuesday that “most taxpayers are lucky if they earn $30,000 a year.”

But Westwood Concern co-founder Mary Kuhl didn’t see what the flap was about. “We really need the best people in there serving (the mayor), and we need to pay them,” she said.