Thursday, October 1, 2026
Spearheaded by outgoing longtime Legislator Francis X. Becker, a move to increase the annual pay of the 19 Nassau County legislators was approved by the legislature’s rules committee on Dec. 7.
“I think that it’s something that should be done,” said Becker. “I won’t benefit from [the raises] myself, but it will compensate them for all the hard work that they do.”
The seven-member committee voted unanimously to raise its salaries from the current $39,500 to $75,000, effective Jan. 1, 2018. The increase would include yearly, automatic raises based on the New York metropolitan Consumer Price Index. On Dec. 21, it will go before the legislature for a full vote. The rules committee includes Democrats Carrie Solages, Judy Jacobs, Kevan Abrahams, and Republicans Norma Gonsalves, Howard Kopel, Richard Nicolello and Dennis Dunne Sr.
“The Nassau County Legislators’ salary has not changed since the inception of the body in 1996,” said Presiding Officer Norma Gonsalves. “This increase, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, takes effect on Jan. 1, 2018, after the next election, and will bring Nassau closer to the compensation levels of [its] New York City and Suffolk counterparts.”
Suffolk legislators’ pay this year is $99,783 and is scheduled through an automatic CPI increase to rise to $100,272 next year. A few Suffolk legislators don’t take the full salary.
“This is way overdue,” said Jacobs. “I’m very supportive of it, and it makes total sense … we will never attract vital, younger, intelligent people because they cannot survive on the [current] salary … as it stands now, it forces us to take other jobs to make up for the difference.”
When the original charter was formed in 1996, the $39,500 figure was chosen because that is what the supervisors and administrators of cities and communities were making at the time. “But,” Jacobs said, “they forgot to give us cost-of-living raises, and those mayors and supervisors got their own raises. It was a flaw in our charter, [and it] prevented us from raising our own salaries.”
In 2007, Jacobs formed a blue ribbon panel — of which she was the presiding officer — which included equal representation of Democrats and Republicans, to view what salaries they were making, and to consider pay raises to $70,000. But legislative leaders refused to bring it to a vote at that time without unanimous support. (Former Democratic legislators David Denenberg of Merrick and David Mejias of Farmingdale both opposed the pay increases. Neither one is a currently serving as a legislator.
