San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said he wants to see measurable improvements in homelessness and public safety before doling out pay raises for top city officials.
The announcement comes ahead of Mahan’s 2025-26 March budget message, set to be published Tuesday. Performance would be measured through the city’s focus area scorecards and dashboards, developed during the 2023-24 budget cycle, and would include a review of the top four priorities — reducing homelessness, increasing public safety, cleaning neighborhoods and attracting investment in jobs and housing.
Though government shouldn’t run like a business, Mahan said, it can adopt the foundational principles of any effective organization for the city’s top officials.
“When I worked in the tech sector, I faced a board of directors every 90 days who demanded progress. We organized ourselves around objectives and key metrics and worked every day to deliver more value in a measurable way to our customers,” he said Monday. “The productivity of our workforce, like that of most of the private sector, steadily improved each year. The public sector productivity increases have failed to match the dramatic increases we’ve seen in the private sector over the decades.”
Union-represented city employees won’t be subject to the performance-based pay increases, Mahan told San José Spotlight, because top city officials are the ones choosing priorities — and they should be held accountable.
“There are already performance reviews and tools for managers to ensure that frontline staff are meeting their obligations,” he said. “But this would not be tied to that. This is really speaking to the most senior members of the organization, because we have extra responsibility and extra authority.”
Mahan first introduced the idea of tying accountability and transparency to compensation when he ran for mayor in 2022. He said politicians and senior administrators who fail to meet the community’s vital goals shouldn’t qualify for raises and he remains resolute about this approach.
The proposal is modeled after a California law that allows the withholding of pay for state lawmakers if they don’t pass a budget on time, but some say this law can cause legislators to turn in a more compromised budget.
If the San Jose City Council approves Mahan’s policy at the March 18 meeting, the initiative will be placed on a 2026 ballot for voter approval.
“I’m not looking to do a special election that’s more expensive for the voters,” Mahan said. “What I have written into the budget message this year is that we would suggest putting this on either the primary or general election — whichever is less costly for taxpayers next year as part of the regular election.”
Councilmembers who spoke with San José Spotlight said they weren’t looped into Mahan’s proposal, and didn’t find out the details until today.
“Over the past couple of budget cycles, we have built a collaborative environment, so it’s disappointing that the mayor would propose major policy changes without first discussing them with his colleagues that are working with him in good faith,” Cohen told San José Spotlight. “While I have concerns about the proposal, I can’t speak about it in detail because I haven’t even seen it in writing yet or heard any of the details.”
Mahan hinted last month he’d be announcing a proposal related to the city’s dashboard in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighting the state’s homeless accountability dashboard.
“Our dashboards showed modest progress in many areas but I’m not satisfied with the pace of change. My upcoming budget message will focus on accountability and incentivizing the delivery of outcomes our community is demanding,” Mahan said.
Contact Vicente Vera at [email protected] or follow @VicenteJVera on X.
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