OAKLAND — Mayor Barbara Lee’s staff will no longer receive a collective $1.7 million pay raise that would have come amid deep budget cuts facing the city, her representatives said.
Lee formally requested to nix the planned 42% budget increase in a memo last Friday to City Councilmember Kevin Jenkins, who filled in as Oakland’s interim mayor before Lee’s election in April.
The new mayor sought to reverse course after this news organization reported last week on the planned budget boost, which would have promoted all 12 of Lee’s staffers to the highest job classification, ballooning their salaries. Now, the budget allocation for the mayor’s staff is expected to be reduced to what it was before: a total spending plan of $4 million.
“My top priority is ensuring that every line in this budget serves Oakland residents as effectively as possible,” Lee said in a statement provided by her office’s new spokesperson, Justin Phillips.
Jenkins proposed the city’s $4.36 billion spending plan that he and the rest of the City Council will consider before the end of the month. Officials will have to plug a $245 million budget shortfall due to declining tax revenues and heavy overtime spending for police.
His fellow council members plan to announce on Tuesday morning a list of suggested amendments to the budget that would prevent 80 planned layoffs.
Jenkins’ proposal had already spared city police and firefighter jobs from being slashed, though it would temporarily close two of Oakland’s fire stations on a rotating basis.
All dozen members of Lee’s staff, by contrast, were slated to have their salaries raised across the board to $150,000 to $250,000 a year, plus benefits. But the highest rank in her office — Special Assistant to the Mayor III — would also have meant the staffers could be fired any time without cause.
City Hall employees serving “at the will” of the mayor also cannot be represented by the city’s two largest public-employee labor unions, SEIU Local 1021 and IFPTE 21, whose political arms collectively spent tens of thousands of dollars to help elect Lee.
A progressive champion of labor, Lee served 26 years representing Oakland and the East Bay in Congress. She pledged at an inauguration ceremony Sunday to wrangle more state funding for the city, which she said has not received its fair share of California’s support.
“We’re going to keep pushing,” she told the crowd at Jack London Square, “until every state investment map has Oakland highlighted in bold.”
The spending increase proposed for Lee’s office would have marked a shift away from how former Mayor Sheng Thao staffed her office — a cadre of workers who earned a diverse range of salaries and varied in seniority.
Voters recalled Thao last November. The fallout from her subsequent federal criminal case over allegations of bribery and corruption led to the firings of nearly all Thao staffers who remained.
The cleaned-out roster has led Lee — elected to complete Thao’s term until November 2026 — to enter office under unique circumstances.
The former congresswoman shied away from discussing budget cuts during campaign season, hesitating to involve herself in Jenkins’ proposal that would map out Oakland’s spending through 2027.
Countless major cities have struggled financially in the years since the pandemic, but Oakland’s woes have more often been linked to a rise in crime that only began to taper off in 2023 — later than other cities of its size and population.
A survey conducted by the Bay Area Council found — in results released last week — that 87% of respondents feel equally safe or less safe in Oakland than they did “a year or two ago.”
Lee’s career in Congress and record with voters won her support from labor and Oakland’s business community alike on the campaign trail — and her transition team was led by the heads of the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Alameda Labor Council alike.
Still, the mayor has acknowledged a learning curve. At Sunday’s ceremony, she guaranteed to field a “top-rate staff that you deserve to make sure that Oakland receives the best constituent services.”
“I don’t have all the answers,” Lee said, “and I don’t expect you to agree with me — which you haven’t — two weeks in; but what I do promise is openness, honesty and a relentless effort. We are fighters.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.