To Pay or Not to Pay

That will be the question before the Common Council this evening as they vote on whether to compensate the Everett School Committee to the tune of $6350 per member per year. Additionally, there is a recommendation from the Finance Committee that the pay be retroactive to January of this year.

There's a lot of emotion tied to this issue; people have very strong feelings about the School Committee and the job that they do -- or what some people feel is the job that they fail to do. Some people feel that the School Committee, in its current make up, has been nothing more than a rubber stamp for what the Superintendent wants to do. There's certainly enough evidence to support that contention.

Unfortunately, the city charter allows the city council to establish a salary for the members of the school committee (Section 52); however, it seems that MGL would prohibit the retroactive pay. According to Chapter 39, Section 6A of MGL, "No increase or reduction in such salaries shall take effect during the year in which such increase or reduction is voted, and no change in such ordinance shall be made between the election of a new council or other legislative body and the qualification of the new council or other legislative body." One could argue that the School Committee qualifies as an "other legislative body." A twist to this, however, is that while our charter accepted this law, the charter applies it only to the salary of the mayor and the city council; it is not included in the section that provides for a salary of the school committee. Section 52 provides that the city council can establish and change the salary from time to time, but says nothing about the effective date of such actions.

One could also argue that this particular school committee was elected on the basis of not being provided a salary; it doesn't make sense to provide them with a salary half way through their term. If they must, and it seems that they will, provide a salary for the school committee, surely such a provision should be subject to the same law that's applied to salary changes for the mayor and the city council -- that the salary not take affect until the next municipal year -- in this case, until January, 2008

It will be interesting to see how the Common Council dances their way around this. It cannot escape them that this is not going to be a popular move, nor is it clear that it's even the right thing to do. They're playing a dangerous political game, and they could come out on the losing end.