Analysis | Setting salaries in Bloomington city government: Unpacking roles of mayor, council, clerk
Thursday was the fourth day in a row for the Bloomington city council to hear from different units within the city about their 2025 budget proposals.
Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson had released the proposed budget the previous week.
The week’s presentations included all the departments of the city as well as the office of the city council and the city clerk.
City clerk Nicole Bolden’s turn in front of the city’s fiscal body gave some insight into the divided responsibilities for setting salaries—among the mayor, the city council, and the city clerk. Those are the three kinds of elected positions in city government.
It’s well known that the mayor has a big role in setting salaries, and that the mayor’s decisions are subject to the approval of the city council.
But it’s not as well understood that for some positions, it’s the city council and the city clerk who are, under state law, supposed to determine the compensation, which then becomes subject to additional approval.
The clerk’s deputies are among those positions. As Bolden put it on Thursday, “Indiana code says that the clerk may, with the approval of the legislative body, fix the salaries of deputies and employees.”
The part of Indiana code that Bolden was citing is IC 36-4-7-3, which also spells out the role of the mayor (the city executive) for most positions:
IC 36-4-7 Appointive officers, deputies, and other employees; compensation
Sec. 3.
(a) This section does not apply to compensation paid by a city to members of its police and fire departments.
(b) Subject to the approval of the city legislative body, the city executive shall fix the compensation of each appointive officer, deputy, and other employee of the city. The legislative body may reduce but may not increase any compensation fixed by the executive. Compensation must be fixed under this section not later than November 1 of each year for the ensuing budget year.
(c) Compensation fixed under this section may be increased or decreased by the executive during the budget year for which it is fixed.
(d) Notwithstanding subsection (b), the city clerk may, with the approval of the legislative body, fix the salaries of deputies and employees appointed under IC 36-4-11-4.
It’s point (d) of the statute that Bolden was citing. The reference to another part of state code [IC 36-4-11-4] in point (d), says that the clerk can appoint the number of deputies and employees that are authorized by the city council, and that they serve at the clerk’s pleasure.
On Thursday, Bolden reported to the council that the same day she’d had a “wonderful conversation with mayor [Kerry] Thomson.” According to Bolden, she and the mayor will be meeting to sort out how to “hire the people we need to hire, at the salaries we need to hire them at.”
But for now it sounds like the working numbers in the proposed 2025 budget for the clerk’s office have come from the administration.
Bolden gave the council a breakdown of the salaries for deputies in her office that had been recommended by the administration: $89,610 for the city clerk, $69,948 for the new unfilled position of deputy clerk for community outreach, $61,911 for the chief deputy clerks and $56,525 for the other deputy clerks.
During Thursday’s meeting, councilmember Sydney Zulich picked up on a point that Bolden had made about the certifications that the deputies in the office have achieved—they are now all accredited municipal clerks. Zulich asked Bolden if she felt that the current compensation for deputy clerks reflects the level of additional education and training they have completed.
Bolden’s response: “Wow. No.” She added, “But there are a couple of ways to handle that. …We could do what other communities have done, which is to write a salary ordinance that actually provides bonuses for educational attainment.”
The administration’s recommended number for the elected city clerk’s position in 2025 is $89,610. Compared to this year’s figure of $87,000, that’s the same 3-percent increase (COLA) that city employees generally are proposed to receive.
But under state law, it’s the city council that is responsible for setting the salaries of elected officials—with an ordinance. That makes the council’s position stronger than the mayor’s compared to the way other employee salaries are set. For other employee salaries, the council “may reduce but may not increase any compensation fixed by the executive.”
For elected officials, on the other hand, if the council initiates the salary ordinance for elected officials, the council can start with whatever number it likes, as long as it’s not lower than last year’s figure. (That’s a feature of state law that ratchets upwards the salaries of city electeds.)
The council could enact the ordinance that it has initiated, and once enacted, that would appear to require the mayor to include sufficient money in the 2025 budget to cover the cost. Otherwise, the budget would not conform to the local law enacted by the council.
Of course, the mayor does not have to accept whatever number the council puts in the salary ordinance for elected officials—the mayor could veto the ordinance. But the council could then override the veto.
Historically, it looks like the Bloomington city council has deferred to the administration for drafting the salary ordinance for elected officials.
Last year, the council convinced former mayor John Hamilton’s administration to include in the salary ordinance a significant pay bump for the clerk—from $64,773 to $87,000, which is a 34-percent increase.
Last year, some councilmembers appealed to a comparison of the city clerk’s salary with department heads, trying to make a case for a higher city clerk’s salary.
A key distinction between the elected city clerk and department heads—like the chief of police, or the director of utilities, or the director of public works, or the city engineer—is that department heads serve at the pleasure of the mayor.
The city clerk is elected every four years on the same cycle as the mayor.
One way to evaluate the clerk’s salary is relative to the mayor’s salary. A consideration for the compensation of both of these elected positions is that it should be adequate to make for competitive elections.
While the mayor’s race has seen competition in the last few cycles—at least in the Democratic Party primary—the clerk’s race has not. Three times since 2015 Bolden has been elected unopposed, either in the primary or the general election.
As a fraction of the mayor’s salary, in 2023 Bloomington’s city clerk earned just half the mayor’s salary—$65,773 compared to $132,458. By that metric, Bloomington was near the bottom of a set of other cities, with the highest populations in the state.
The increase in the clerk’s salary for 2024, to $87,000, puts the clerk’s salary this year at 63 percent of the mayor’s salary ($138,031). If Bloomington had set the clerk’s salary at 85 percent of the mayor’s salary, which would have matched Columbus and Gary’s 2023 percentage, the clerk’s salary for 2024 would have been $117,000.
