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Milwaukee's Common Council recently passed a plan to raise the salary for Milwaukee's elected officials and dozens of unelected leaders for the first time in over a decade. Many are getting somewhere between a $10,000 to $20,000 increase, including members of the Common Council themselves.

This raises the question: How much money should our politicians and public officials make? 

• Should it be competitive in order to attract talented people? 
• Or should their salary reflect the term “public servant?”

And since it’s always awkward when you’re the one voting to give yourself a raise, especially after you’ve just raised your constituents’ taxes, people naturally have feelings about it. 

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As we enter another election year, where our “full-time” legislature will probably make a full year’s paycheck despite, once again, likely adjourning for the year in April, it begs questions like:

• “How much is the right amount to pay our public officials?”
• “Are these full time or part time jobs?”
• And “who gets to decide?” 

If you pay them too little, you’re likely going to lose talented people to the private sector where they can make much more. Or risk only having people who can afford to make that little because they’re already wealthy. 

But paying public officials a comparable private sector salary feels hard to justify to taxpayers. There’s a feeling that part of the job is the sacrifice and no one should be running because of the salary they could make. 

There are a lot of hypotheticals and hyperbole when tussling with this topic. 

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However, the one variable in this equation that’s as reliable as death and taxes is inflation. So, at the very least, we should be able to agree that public officials should get automatic cost of living pay increase that doesn’t require a political process. 

Because no matter what the “right” salary is today, that’s not going to be the “right” salary 15 years from now. 

Kristin Brey is the "My Take" columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.