Quote Originally Posted by swingline View Post
The cost of the legislative branch is an insignificant part of the total city budget.
Bull. It was over 1% of the budget, or $13,232,197, in FY11. Median among other major cities is about 0.46%. Just cut that amount in half and we'd still be above the median in spending but we'd save over $6.5 million dollars per year there alone.

I will agree, though, that councilperson salary isn't the major issue with that overspending. The three key issues are [[1) staff, [[2) benefits, and [[3) perks.