If you’re Congressman Lee Terry, you opt to increase your own salary while voting against an increase in minimum wage. If you’re Ohio mayor Tom Scarnecchia, however, you do the honorable thing and cut your salary by 50% to accommodate your town’s fiscal emergency.
The gracious mayor is giving up $34,000 this year help reduce his city’s deficit, reports WKBN News. Like Uruguay’s former president Jose Mujica, Scarnecchia seems to be an individual who’s in office for all the right reasons.
Ten minutes into the meeting, he stated:
“From now until probably January 1st, I am going to take a 50 percent pay cut in my wage.”
The mayor is reducing his income because the shortfall in Niles has risen to $130,000. As a result, the town is in “a fiscal emergency, and the state requires that the budget be balanced.”
The city council, too, is discussing cutting their own pay by 50%. These kinds of salary cuts are unheard of in modern day America.
“Council would take a 50 percent cut in pay,” said Service Director Jim DePasquale. “This is from July 1st to January 1st, so it’s a six-month, it’s strictly temporary.”
In the video above, Councilman Barry Steffey states:
“I think that him making that personal sacrifice should show the citizens that he’s doing the very best he can. He loves Niles.”
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