Baltimore County Council votes for a 73% pay increase as it moves to full-time compensation

The Baltimore County Council on Monday voted to raise its pay from a part-time salary of $69,000 a year to a full-time one of $119,750, a 73.6% increase, as each council member’s district becomes smaller.

The council’s seven members voted along party lines. Democrats Mike Ertel, Julian Jones, Izzy Patoka and Pat Young supported it; Republicans David Marks and Nino Mangione opposed it. Republican Todd Crandell was absent.

Patoka said after the meeting that he had hoped for a unanimous vote that would acknowledge all the uncompensated hours that council members spend responding to texts, calls and social media messages on issues such as traffic obstacles and permits.

But Mangione and Marks had already campaigned on a promise not to support it.

“What I am asking my colleagues here to do is vote on this issue, not on the politics,” Patoka said at the meeting. “Take your political filter and put it away. Bring out your ‘is this the right thing to do?’ filter and make your vote using that filter.”

Mangione countered that the pay increase didn’t sit right with him given the struggles in the northern district. Only two police officers cover the territory from the Hereford Zone to the Pennsylvania border, he said, and a bridge fell down last year.

“There are other priorities that I think the taxpayers in my district would appreciate that money going to,” he said. “You’re asking the council to technically do less yet receive what would be equivalent to an almost 70-some percent raise at a time when I think the people, the citizens of Baltimore County, are struggling.”

The council, established with seven members in 1956, is expanding to nine for the first time, reducing the number of residents per council member from about 120,000 to 95,000. The current council consists of seven men, and everyone except Jones is white. The expanded council will likely include at least one Black woman, one Latino man and two representatives under the age of 30.

The general election is Nov. 3. Early voting begins Thursday.

The vote also included a new salary for the council chair, who will receive $129,750 — a 68.5% increase over the current salary of $77,000. Ertel is the current council chair.

The council salaries will be commensurate with full-time pay, but the law does not require council members to relinquish outside employment. Three of the seven council members are running for re-election. Two of them, Marks and Ertel, have full-time jobs.

In December 2025, the Personnel and Salary Advisory Board recommended increasing the salary to $140,000. Some current council members expressed concern that the number was too high. Council candidates essentially had to run for a job for which they didn’t know the salary, and some expressed frustration that the council had not dealt with the salaries earlier.

“I have come before this council on more than one occasion and asked about the salary, but it’s not until one day before the mail-in ballots come out that you talk about it,” said Sharonda Huffman, who is running as a Democrat to represent the Essex area. Mail-in ballots began going out Sept. 21. The legislation was introduced Sept. 22.

Part of what slowed down the council was blowback from a November 2024 bill that tied pension increases to future salary bumps and would have allowed several retiring council members to earn more as retirees than they earned on the council. The council repealed that bill in March 2026 and passed emergency legislation to make sure that former council member Wade Kach, who had introduced the pension bump bill, did not benefit from it as he unexpectedly retired before the repeal went into effect.

The primary was less than a month after Kach retired, and three of the seven council members were running for county executive. Council candidates reported hearing about the pension bump on the campaign trail.

The council also voted Monday to increase the county executive’s salary to $240,000 from $192,000, a 25% increase. It postponed a vote on an administrative request to increase the salary of the county administrative officer to $310,721 beginning in June 2027 from the current salary of $263,000.

County officials said the increase is needed to compete with applicants in other counties, but the council members said they wanted more information about comparable positions before deciding.

The council also approved a deal to give the Baltimore Ravens $25 million to stay at their practice facility in Owings Mills, as well as a deal to purchase the St. Pius X property in Rodgers Forge as much-needed recreation space for local sports teams. Several community members applauded the council for the St. Pius purchase, saying they were “overjoyed” that their church would remain a community asset.

At the request of administration officials who seek to “modernize” procurement, the council also approved legislation lifting the cap on contracts requiring its approval. The threshold jumps from $25,000 to $150,000 for business contracts and leases, and from $25,000 to $100,000 for real estate sales.