A council member wants to give D.C.'s next mayor a $40,000 raise, and the current one can't touch it

Why this matters to you right now

Thirty-one days before D.C. voters pick a new mayor, a member of the outgoing council has introduced a bill to give that future mayor a $40,000-a-year pay raise before she even takes the oath. The bill, filed Thursday by at-large Councilmember Anita Bonds, would push the mayor's base salary from $250,000 to $290,000. Current Mayor Muriel Bowser gets nothing. By law, she can't. The person who almost certainly collects is Janeese Lewis George, the Ward 4 councilmember who won the June Democratic primary and is 31 days from becoming the District's next chief executive.

That's the math. The politics are a little more complicated.

What the bill actually does

Bonds has introduced a bill that would increase the mayor's salary from $250,000 to $290,000 if it becomes law. But the raise doesn't stop there. The bill would also increase the salary of Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Brian Schwalb, since D.C. law dictates they both make $10,000 less than the mayor. So under the bill, Mendelson and Schwalb would each move from $240,000 to $280,000.

There's also a structural piece that could have longer-term consequences. In addition to the pay bump, Bonds' bill would open the door for cost-of-living adjustments to the mayor's salary, likely based on the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers, as is the case for members of the council. That's the part that rarely gets discussed in the first news cycle but tends to matter most over time: automatic inflation-linked adjustments would prevent the salary from sitting frozen for years the way it has before.

Bowser has been making $250,000 since 2023. District law prohibits a sitting mayor from collecting a pay increase during an active term, a statutory restriction meant to prevent officials from voting to instantly enrich themselves while still in office. So even if the full council passes this bill, Bowser signs it, and Congress clears its 30-day review window before January, Bowser walks out of the Wilson Building in January 2027 at the same rate she walked in.

If passed by the council, the salary increases would take effect after approval from the mayor and a 30-day congressional review period. The council's next legislative meeting is October 6. The regular session closes before the November 3 general election. Time is short.

Who benefits, and who decides

Bowser announced last year she won't be seeking a fourth term and will likely be succeeded by Lewis George, who won the District's June Democratic primary over former D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie and several other hopefuls. Lewis George is on the November ballot and leads in every public measure of the race. Barring an extraordinary general-election upset, she is the person this bill is written for.

Bonds, for her part, is retiring. She is not seeking reelection to her at-large seat. That removes one obvious political motive: she isn't setting up a future salary negotiation for herself. Her stated rationale, according to WTOP's reporting, is straightforward compensation alignment. The mayor runs a government that, by Phil Mendelson's own framing, operates like a $20 billion-a-year corporation. The salary hasn't kept pace.

Mendelson and Schwalb are both on the November ballot themselves. Mendelson is seeking reelection as council chair. Schwalb is running for a second term as attorney general. Both would receive a raise under the bill if they win their races, because their salaries are constitutionally tethered to the mayor's. Neither has publicly commented on the bill, attributed or on record, as of publication.

The timing question

The bill lands at an awkward moment, and not only because the election is five weeks out. The council spent the spring passing a budget that cut services and drew sustained criticism from advocates and residents. D.C. closed out fiscal year 2026 in difficult financial shape. The District's unemployment rate in August sat at 5.7%, above the national average of 4.1%, driven in part by federal workforce cuts that cascaded into the local private economy.

Raising the salaries of three of the city's most prominent officials in that environment invites the obvious question: for whom is this a priority right now? Bonds does not appear to have scheduled a public hearing on the bill yet, and none of the other twelve council members have publicly signed on as co-sponsors, based on available reporting as of October 3.

Analysis: The bill's structure is defensible on the merits. The mayor's pay has not kept pace with comparable chief executives in other large American cities, and D.C.'s mayor exercises executive authority over a complex government without the federal backup that states provide their governors. Locking in COLA adjustments, in particular, is straightforwardly sensible policy. But the window for passing legislation before the session closes is narrow, public hearings take time, and the council has a long list of bills already competing for floor time. Whether this moves fast enough to become law before January is genuinely uncertain.

The Spingarn opening, same week

The salary bill arrived the day after Bowser cut the ribbon on a separate project that speaks to the same underlying question: what does the government owe residents when the economy contracts?

On Thursday, October 1, Mayor Bowser joined the Department of Employment Services and the DC Department of General Services to cut the ribbon on the new DC Infrastructure Academy at the former Spingarn High School campus in Ward 5. The $73 million investment creates a new training facility for high-demand infrastructure careers.

The new facility includes 50,000 square feet of renovated interior space and 12,000 square feet of exterior training space, featuring an automotive lab, instructional and training rooms, a Pepco training yard, flexible outdoor work areas, a north courtyard terrace, and a new main entrance. The academy will maintain its presence at Shannon Place SE in Ward 8, where IT and cybersecurity training programs will continue.

The academy specializes in training people for infrastructure trade jobs, including construction, energy, telecommunications, roadwork, and water. To date, more than 6,500 people have gone through the academy. More than 5,000 graduates have been successfully matched to employment, and the DCIA served over 600 participants in the past year alone.

DOES Director Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes did not shy away from naming the problem the academy is trying to solve. "It's no surprise to anyone that federal jobs have been cut; adjacent industries to the federal sector are also impacted, so we have seen a higher unemployment," she said. "We know that jobs have been cut, but also know that in industries like skilled trades, there are unfilled opportunities every single day."

One graduate, Akeem Washington, spoke at the opening. "I just want to say I knew nothing about the trades; I knew nothing about the infrastructure world," he said. Washington now works as a distribution designer in the engineering department with Pepco.

The Spingarn campus at 2500 Benning Road NE sat shuttered for years. Its conversion into a workforce hub is the kind of end-of-term legacy item Bowser's team has been pushing hard in the final weeks. It is also, viewed alongside the salary bill, a useful frame: one measure tries to define what the job of running D.C. is worth; the other tries to prove the government can still create value for residents who need it most.

What D.C. Residents Should Watch

• October 6 legislative meeting: The council's next floor session is the first opportunity for Bonds' salary bill to move. Watch whether it gets referred to committee or scheduled for a hearing before the session closes.
• Co-sponsors and opposition: No other council members have publicly backed or opposed the bill as of October 3. The first round of reaction from colleagues will signal whether this has any real momentum in the final weeks of the session.
• Lewis George's position: The bill is written to benefit her. She hasn't commented on it publicly. Her response, or her silence, tells residents something about how she plans to govern.
• The 30-day congressional clock: Even if the council passes the bill this month and Bowser signs it, Congress has 30 days to review D.C. legislation. A bill passed in late October might not clear that window before January 20, 2027, when a new mayor takes office.
• DCIA enrollment: Ward 5 residents near Spingarn can now enroll at the new campus at 2500 Benning Road NE. The program is open to any D.C. resident over 18. With the District's August unemployment rate at 5.7%, the waitlist will be worth watching in the weeks ahead.

Sources: WTOP (Thomas Robertson, Oct. 2, 2026) | Hoodline (Oct. 3, 2026) | mayor.dc.gov (Oct. 1, 2026) | DC News Now (Oct. 1, 2026) | DC Council legislative agenda (Oct. 6, 2026)