A LIVING WAGE FOR CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL: Gloria Ferris, who wants to be my City Council representative, explains why she wants the job.

No, no, that was a joke! Gloria's post is, as she says, a revealing "non-judgmental" description of a City Council member's compensation package. And she's right, it's pretty good... though adding the $45,000 cost of a Councilman's aide to the list of "compensation" items seems kind of outside the lines. $100,000 in pay, fringes and expenses for the Council Member him/herself is enough to make the point.

Right Angle Blog takes this as an argument to reduce the size of City Council. There's some back and forth on this in comments at BFD.

To me, it's an argument for examining the size of the pay package, not the size of Council. "Are Council Members overpaid?" is one question. "Are Council Members underworked?" is quite another.

The idea that Council's size, staffing, etc. is primarily a financial issue is a distraction from a far more interesting question: If you were going to design a system of political leadership for Cleveland citizens that truly valued access, accountability and grassroots empowerment, what would that system look like?

Geoff Beckman and I argued about this a few months ago, here and here.