Charter commission to draft new language on council pay after hours-long debate

Charter Vision Commission members voted on Jan. 21 to ask staff to draft replacement language for the charter provision that fixes Common Council pay at $600 per year.

The move follows roughly two hours of discussion about whether council compensation should remain locked in Norwalk’s charter or be handled through the city budget if state law permits. Commissioners and a presenter reviewed examples from other Connecticut communities, a pending effort to repeal state statutory limits, and legal risks tied to removing the pay language from the charter.

Why it matters: Council compensation affects who runs for office, how much time members can spend on official duties and whether pay increases must go to municipal voters via referendum. Commissioners framed the question as a tradeoff: leave a small, automatic baseline in the charter or remove the fixed dollar amount and risk that council pay could be zero unless the council or mayor and board of estimate place funds in the budget.

Commission discussion and context Steve (presenter) told the commission that current practice in Norwalk and many Connecticut cities ties council pay to the charter or to a statutory process that can require voter referendum. He said the state statute often cited in the meeting is 7-4-60 and confirmed that, under existing law, increases to council members’ salaries commonly trigger a referendum unless the statute is changed. “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it’s a duck,” he said in describing how courts have treated stipends that effectively function as salaries.

Commissioners cited a range of possible approaches discussed in other communities: leaving a modest baseline in the charter and allowing additional increases “as may be permitted by law,” tying council pay to a fraction of the mayor’s salary (one commissioner suggested 1/15 of the mayor’s pay), or removing the fixed amount from the charter entirely and relying on budgetary approval if the legislature removes the referendum requirement.

Examples and clarifications mentioned during the meeting included: - Current Norwalk charter language (section 4‑7(c)) sets council member pay at $600 per year. - Other cities’ practices, as cited in the discussion: New Haven uses a $5,000 annual figure for council members; Waterbury about $4,000; Bridgeport’s approach was described as reimbursement rather than a salary. Those figures were offered as context, not as formal findings of this commission. - A Connecticut superior-court case was described by the presenter as treating a broadly defined stipend as equivalent to compensation in one municipal instance. - The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM) and other statewide groups were reported to be engaged in outreach about the statute; commission members said CCM’s executive director had been asked to look into repeal of the statutory referendum requirement (7-4-60).

Legal and procedural limits The presenter and commissioners repeatedly cautioned that removing salary language from a charter can carry legal and practical risk: if the charter no longer specifies a minimum pay, a future council could set pay to zero unless budget practice or state law provided a different path. Commission members also noted that if the legislature does not act to repeal or change the statute, any meaningful increase approved through the budget could still require a referendum.

Action taken The commission voted unanimously to ask staff to draft replacement language for section 4‑7(c) of the charter that would remove the current fixed dollar figure and include language such as allowing additional council compensation “as may be permitted by law” or otherwise specifying a constitutionally defensible floor. The motion was made on the record by Commissioner Carl Dickens and approved without recorded opposition. (See “Votes at a glance” below for the item and other formal minutes votes taken at the meeting.)

What was left undecided Commissioners did not finalize the wording of any charter amendment at this meeting. They deferred to staff counsel to produce specific language and to return to the commission with alternatives — including (a) leaving the $600 baseline and adding a budgetary exception if state law permits, (b) removing the dollar figure entirely and relying on budget authority, or (c) adopting a formula tied to another elected official’s salary plus cost-of-living adjustments. Members repeatedly said they wanted to await clearer signals from the state legislature while still producing draft charter language in advance of the commission’s May report timeline.

Ending The commission’s next steps are (1) to receive the drafted replacement language from staff, (2) decide whether to recommend keeping a minimum floor in the charter or removing fixed compensation language, and (3) monitor the state legislature’s work on statute 7-4-60 before the commission finalizes recommendations for the council and voters.