Janeese Lewis George Says No to a $290,000 Mayor's Salary as the Council Weighs a Pay Bump She Did Not Ask For
A bill from At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds would raise the mayor's pay from $250,000 to $290,000 next year - and, by law, lift the Council chairman's and attorney general's pay with it. The woman favored to win the job on Tuesday is telling the Council not to bother.
The District's likely next mayor is turning down a raise before she has won the job. Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, the Democratic nominee in Tuesday's mayoral election, told The Washington Sun she opposes a bill moving through the DC Council that would bump the mayoral salary next year to $290,000, up from the $250,000 Mayor Muriel Bowser has been making since 2023. 'Families in this city are stretched on child care, housing and their utility bills, and I am not going to ask them to pay more for the job of the mayor,' she told the Sun. Lewis George says she did not request the measure, and Bowser's office confirmed it did not come from them either.
The bill was introduced this month by At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds, who said the raise would 'better reflect modern cost realities,' and it would also add new annual cost-of-living increases. The timing is dictated by law: the mayor's pay cannot be increased during the four-year term, so any push has to happen in the two months between the election and the mayor assuming office. The stakes extend beyond one office - the council chair and the attorney general are both paid, by law, $10,000 less than the mayor, so raising the mayor's salary lifts theirs automatically. Council Chair Phil Mendelson declined to specify whether he supports the bill, and Attorney General Brian Schwalb's office did not comment.
The debate is landing in a hard season for District pay. Bowser's $250,000 already puts her among the 10 best-paid mayors in the country - though not at the top of her own government, where Interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll makes $319,000 and University of the District of Columbia President Maurice Edington makes $310,000. The District's median household income in 2025 was $107,600, and Council members make $171,000 a year. On the same Wednesday that Bonds' committee heard the bill, hundreds of unionized city employees rallied outside the Wilson Building over a proposed contract for some 10,000 workers that would carry no cost-of-living adjustments at all - with the city's Workforce Investments Account holding $130 million, $122 million of it already set aside for a new firefighters' contract.
