There's change in the political air. In the next few weeks, York's new Cabinet will meet for the first time. It's a revolution in the way local government is run that's designed to offer quicker, leaner and more effective decision-making, while releasing 'backbench' councillors from the grind of endless committee meetings so they can spend more time working in their communities.

Early worries it could also be less accountable may or may not prove unfounded.

Certainly council leader Rod Hills has pledged that Cabinet government will be no less open than the present, cumbersome committee system.

Cabinet papers will be published in advance: and Cabinet meetings themselves will "almost certainly" be open to the public. Provided they give notice in advance, ordinary people - you and me - should even be able to ask questions at the meetings.

With time ticking away to that first meeting on May 25 there is one issue still to be settled, though: and it's one with the potential to be as explosive as the issue of Cabinet accountability itself.

That issue is, how much should councillors who are members of the new Cabinet be paid, and should they in effect be full-time professional politicians?

The idea of paid, elected councillors on a full-time salary won't be an easy one to sell - especially when York council is so cash-starved local taxpayers faced a double whammy of cuts in services and increased council taxes in the last council budget.

The dangers of going down the professional route were demonstrated recently by the outrage which greeted Cardiff Council's decision to award its leader and Lord Mayor (in Cardiff a political, not ceremonial, post) a £58,000-a-year salary.

An independent review body came up with the figure by equating pay rates for senior elected councillors with those of salaried council officials. The Lord Mayor claimed to spend three days a week on council business: and so received three-fifths of the chief executive's almost £90,000 salary.

A similar formula was used for other senior local politicians - equating to £40,000 a year for the deputy leader and decent whacks for cabinet members and the opposition leader too.

It didn't wash. The outraged local press launched a campaign; the ruling Labour Party split, with eight backbench councillors who objected to the salaries being suspended from the party then re-instated; and finally last week the Welsh Assembly stepped in, warning if the council itself didn't cut the allowances, the assembly would do it for them.

No one is suggesting that councillors in York would be daft enough to try to pay themselves such sums.

But, like Cardiff, City of York Council has taken the step of appointing an independent review body to look at the question of councillors' allowances. And there is a cross-party consensus among members of both the ruling Labour and opposition Liberal Democrat groups that the job of a senior councillor is simply getting too big to be done on a part-time basis by councillors who also hold down full-time jobs.

That may just be true. City of York Council is big business. Its political leaders have an annual budget of £130 million to spend, and are ultimately responsible for vital services that affect almost 180,000 people.

And while full-time paid council officers actually run the services, the 53 elected politicians - the councillors - decide policy and make the tough decisions about how the £130 million should be spent.

The decisions that are made - closing old folks homes, building the Northern Gateway Park and Ride, possibly soon closing the Barbican Pool - are very often not popular ones. They may not even be the right ones. But somebody has to make them. Is it fair to expect those decisions to be made by harassed, over-tired councillors trying to fit their 20 or 30 hours of council business into an already-busy 40-hour working week?

And is it fair to expect employers who pay councillors a wage to do a job of work continually to have to give them time off to spend on their council business?

The truth is, many senior councillors - those likely to be in the new Cabinet or shadow Cabinet - have already given up full-time work to concentrate more on their council duties. Some work part-time: some are effectively unemployed and surviving on their council allowances alone.

For certain senior councillors, those allowances are already higher than many electors probably realise. In the 1999 to 2000 financial year up to February, council leader Rod Hills has picked up £15,210 in allowances. Planning committee chairman Coun Dave Merrett has made £17,218 and opposition leader Coun Steve Galloway £12,167.

Some would say that's a lot of money: but enough to persuade someone to give up a well-paid job to spend more time on council work? Perhaps not.

Rod Hills refuses to be drawn on whether he thinks councillors should be full time. But he does point out that unless our elected representatives are properly remunerated, it will be increasingly difficult to attract quality candidates: and the council will continue to be dominated by middle-aged and elderly men who no longer need to work full-time to support themselves or their families.

"If you want people to do the job then these issues have really got to be sorted," he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Coun Steve Galloway says a move towards full-time councillors is "inevitable" given the increasing expectations of the public, and the demands on councillors' time.

"It is going to happen," he said. "Councillors are going to be spending 30 or 40 hours a week doing their council jobs. You're not going to work 40 hours in a day job then another 40 for the council, then spend the rest of the time asleep."

If we do end up with paid councillors, then, what should they be earning?

The Liberal Democrats say only that it should be 'affordable'. "We don't want to be spending millions of pounds on this rather than on providing public services," Coun Galloway said.

The council's highest-paid salaried official is on between £80-£90,000, and other top officials are on anything between £40 - £80,000.

Will they be used as the basis for calculating councillors' allowances? Highly unlikely, says Rod Hills.

"I'm not answering hypothetical questions," he said. "But I would be very surprised if I was prepared to accept anything of that sort of level."

Interesting times lie ahead.