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City Council's Big Bucks & Other Data from Comparative Study
A new report released by The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative looks at how the city councils in 15 major US cities stack up to each other, primarily in how they spend their money. Los Angeles' City Council comes out ahead...when it comes to paying themselves; our Council spends the most per seat on itself, about $1.7 million, and draw the biggest salaries among the 15 cities included in the study. The average salary for an LA City Councilmember: $178,789.
Some other LA data from the study: On average, a council member is in their seat for 7.3 years, though the max time is 12 years (three four-year terms allowed). While 11% of our city's population is Asian, 0% of our 15-member council is. Over the past 10 years, 2 members have been convicted of or indicted for a major offense.
Pew explains this "report compares councils in 15 cities, including the 10 largest, in a number of ways that can be quantified. Among them are council budgets, staffing, salaries, certain electoral conditions, tenure and the representation of historically underrepresented groups."
In addition to Los Angeles, the councils of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, San Diego, San Jose and Washington were included, as were Denver, Nashville and San Francisco for some of the comparisons.
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