Zohran Mamdani has filled out the membership of a commission tasked with reviewing pay for New York City elected officials, moving the city closer to resolving a salary dispute that has dragged on for a decade.
The mayor appointed Carl Weisbrod, Dr. Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, and Larian Angelo to the Quadrennial Advisory Commission on Friday, completing a panel first announced jointly with City Council Speaker Julie Menin back on Jan. 23. The appointments came on day 79 of Mamdani’s tenure, as his administration continues to take shape across multiple fronts.
Weisbrod, a former city planning official and founding president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, will chair the commission. Barrios-Paoli served as deputy mayor for health and human services under a previous administration. Angelo brings budget expertise, having worked as first deputy director at the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget and as a former City Council finance director. All three carry deep institutional knowledge of how City Hall operates and how money moves through it.
“Carl, Lilliam and Larian have each spent their careers serving this city with integrity,” Mamdani said in a statement. “I am confident they will approach this responsibility with the seriousness and independence it demands, and I look forward to carefully reviewing their recommendations.”
The commission is expected to examine salaries for City Council members, citywide elected officials, and district attorneys, then issue recommendations for the mayor and speaker to weigh. Any actual pay changes would still require City Council approval, keeping the final decision with the legislature.
Menin welcomed the appointments in her own statement, calling the commission “essential” for ensuring that compensation decisions are made independently and transparently. Both she and Mamdani have said they will not accept a pay increase for themselves.
The review addresses a long-standing gap. The last Quadrennial Commission convened in 2015, and the last full salary review wrapped up in 2016. City law required the commission to meet every four years, but that mandate went unfulfilled for nearly a decade.
That neglect turned politically awkward last year, when the City Council moved to solve the problem itself. Lawmakers proposed legislation that would have given Council members, the mayor, the public advocate, borough presidents, and the comptroller a 16% raise, while district attorneys would have received a 6% bump. For Council members, that meant pushing compensation from $148,500 to $172,500.
Supporters of the legislation argued the increase was overdue. The figures reflected rising costs in New York City, greater demands on elected officials’ time, and the reality that comparable positions in cities like Chicago had already seen salary growth. Council members hadn’t gotten a raise since 2016, a stretch that covered a period of significant inflation and an increasingly complex city government.
Government watchdog groups weighed in as the legislation moved forward late last year, raising concerns about process and transparency when elected officials set their own pay. Those objections helped push Mamdani and Menin toward the commission model instead, which insulates the recommendations behind an independent body rather than a straight legislative vote.
The commission structure does not guarantee raises will happen, or that they will match what the legislation proposed. The panel’s recommendations are advisory, and the political dynamics around elected pay are rarely straightforward. Mamdani has made clear he intends to review the findings carefully before acting.
For New Yorkers, the stakes are more than symbolic. How the city compensates its elected officials affects who can realistically run for office and stay in it. Keeping salaries stagnant while the cost of living rises creates a system that advantages candidates with independent wealth or other income sources. Whether or not the commission ultimately recommends the full 16% increase, the review itself forces a public accounting that City Hall avoided for years.
With 21 days left before the 100-day mark, Mamdani’s team has used this stretch to build out key structures, and the salary commission is among the more consequential. Its recommendations, when they arrive, will test how much political capital the new mayor is willing to spend on a question that is popular inside City Hall and complicated everywhere else.
