Spokane police leadership to receive raises with approval of 2023-2026 contract

Lieutenants and captains with the Spokane Police Department will receive raises in the next three years commensurate with those of rank-and-file officers after the Spokane City Council on Monday approved a new union contract.

The Spokane Police Lieutenants and Captains Association, a separate union from the Spokane Police Guild that represents the vast majority of the city’s officers, has been working under the terms of a one-year contract approved in 2022 that expired at the end of last year. The contract approved Monday covers 2023 through the end of 2026, including retroactively to the beginning of this year.

The salaries of lieutenants and captains are pegged to that of uniform officers, with lieutenants receiving a base rate of 20% higher than that of sergeants and captains having a base rate 18% higher than that of lieutenants. Both classes of officer will receive pay raises in line with those negotiated by the Guild.

The Guild contract approved in June included a 5% pay increase for 2023, retroactively applied to the beginning of the year; a 7% increase in 2024; another 7% increase in 2025; and anywhere from a 3.5% to 7% increase in 2026, pegged to the consumer price index for the Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma area.

Like the Guild contract, the contract approved Monday also sweetens the deal for lieutenants and captains who have received a college education, increasing slightly each year from a 1.5% salary increase for those with an associate degree and 3.5% increase for those with a bachelor’s this year to 3% and 5% respectively by the end of 2026.

The contract for the Lieutenants and Captains Association, which includes only 24 employees, is largely parallel to the one approved earlier this year for the much larger rank-and-file Police Guild. As a result of the salary increases negotiated by the Guild, the compensation differences between uniform officers and their leadership were compressed, City Council Budget Director Matt Boston wrote in a Monday text.

The new contract will cost an additional $111,000 this year and an average of $367,000 more each year from 2024 through the end of 2026.

“We planned for it in the budget, so the differences are pretty immaterial,” Boston wrote.