Tuscaloosa Eyes Raising Public Safety Director’s Pay to $230,000 After State Law Ends His Overtime
Tuscaloosa is considering raising the pay grade for its newly recreated Executive Director of Public Safety by 31 percent, lifting the position's salary ceiling to more than $267,000 and making it the highest-paid job in city government.
The proposal went before the city council's Administration and Policy Committee on Tuesday afternoon in the Daugherty Conference Room, and follows a new state law that strips overtime pay from the position at the end of this month.
The city's public safety employees are paid on a salary schedule that has eight distinct pay grades, with 15 "steps" per pay grade, which employees can climb over years of service to the city. A patrol officer or firefighter is Grade 1, a fire lieutenant is Grade 3, a Police Captain is Grade 5, and both chiefs are Grade 7.
Only one job sits in the affected pay grade - the Executive Director of Public Safety - and since it will no longer qualify for overtime in October, the council is considering upping the base salary dramatically.
The position, which Maddox said he re-created to unify public safety leadership in a time of unprecedented threats, came with a controversial $175,000 salary for Blankley, which has since increased to $184,596 through the city's step raises. It also qualified for a capped $10,000 in overtime compensation, and that ends soon.
House Bill 160, sponsored by Rep. Ron Bolton, R-Northport, amended two Tuscaloosa County local acts dating to 1980 and 1988 to specify that whoever holds the city's executive director of public safety job is not eligible for any overtime pay or compensatory leave. The law takes effect on October 1st.
Maddox told the committee the position's Grade 8 pay scale must be rebuilt so the loss of overtime does not amount to a pay cut.
"When we were discussing this several months ago, one of the things we looked at was: what does the police chief normally make in a given year? What does a fire chief make? Under state law, as you know, they are entitled to overtime. Last year, both chief positions made over $200,000," Maddox said. "So, to be clear, the council did not want this position to have either overtime or comp time. So now we're updating the salary grade so that the current executive director doesn't lose money by taking the position, which is over both police and fire, but also makes more than the people he is supervising. That's the goal."
Under the pay scale adopted in November 2025, the EDPS's Grade PF8 starts at $144,206.20 and tops out at $203,759.59.
Grade PF7, which covers the police chief and fire chief, tops out at $163,007.64. A chief at a senior step making big overtime could earn more than the executive director.
Under the August 2026 proposal, PF8 would run from $189,015.91 to $267,074.53, clearing the chiefs' ceiling at every step.
Blankley would get an almost $50,000 raise and see his pay climb to $230,297.53, with room to see it soon climb above a quarter-million dollars per year.
Asked whether the job would become the highest-paid position at the city, Maddox estimated it would.
"This would become the highest salary, I suspect, by $20,000 to $30,000 if I had to guess, but I'd have to ask Miss Herbert," Maddox said. He said the chief operating officer currently holds the city's highest salary.
Committee chairman John Faile, a former Tuscaloosa Police Captain himself, said he expects public reaction.
"I don't know if this is relevant, but I tried to find out some things online, and in Montgomery, their public safety director is paid much less than $200,000. I don't know what the state director of ALEA is paid," Faile said. "Again, I don't want to go into personalities. [Blankley] is doing a great job, I don't doubt that. I just know we're going to hear from the public about this, Mayor."
Maddox countered the questions by pointing to the scale of events the city secures under Blankley's leadership - events for which he can no longer be paid overtime.
"Last year, we had 51 events with more than 1,000 people that TPD and Fire and Rescue were directly responsible for providing security for. This weekend, we will have 125,000 people within three city blocks that we will be responsible for securing, and that ultimately falls on the shoulders of the executive director of public safety," Maddox said. "With all due respect to Montgomery, they don't have that same challenge."
The committee, already pressed for time on Tuesday, voted to pass the matter to a September meeting of the Public Safety Committee, but Councilman Joe Eatmon said he would only do so if the council would compress its timeline, asking that the matter be introduced and voted on at the full council the same night it reaches the Public Safety Committee rather than laid over for a second reading.
"I'm willing to move to Public Safety in two weeks, with the caveat that it's doubled up on the council agenda the same night. I don't want to prolong this, and I think that gives anybody with any concerns a couple of weeks to talk about it," Eatmon said. "I'm in full support of it. I think we knew this was coming. We had these same conversations when the position was created, and we knew it was coming once the House bill passed. So I think we're here now."
For now, the council will take a two-week hiatus to observe Labor Day next week and because of an expected lack of quorum on September 15th. They will meet again on September 22nd, when this matter will be discussed before the Public Safety Committee and, as Eatmon suggested, potentially voted on by the full council so their decision is made before the new law takes effect on October 1st.
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