Council to tangle with disclosure of employees’ salaries
In February, Halifax regional council directed city staff to examine the possibility of requiring the salaries of all senior employees to be made public each year.
City hall’s practice is to release, upon a request from media outlets or others, salary ranges for non-union personnel and the hourly wage for unionized workers, as set out in collective agreements, a municipal staff report says.
As council’s motion from the winter illustrates, the June 28 report notes that “other jurisdictions have specific legislation that mandates the release of exact salary information.”
It says this essentially trumps “any privacy protections that may exist.”
According to audited, year-end financial statements, about $2.1 million was paid out to the mayor, councillors and the city’s chief administrative officer.
The CAO, Richard Butts, took home the most, earning $289,000.
In 2010, the provincial government passed a law requiring public bodies — such as school boards, district health authorities and Crown corporations — to disclose pay for any employee if the amount tops $100,000. Halifax Regional Municipality and other municipalities are not subject to the act, the city staff report says.
Legal staff and the municipality’s access and privacy office reviewed existing legislation and have provided council with a handful of options. They’re contained in an information report that acting CAO Mike Labrecque submitted and is on the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting.
It says council could:
- Request the city’s top staffers “consent to the disclosure” of their salaries.
- Instruct staff to immediately publish on the municipality’s website, “as part of routine disclosure,” the salary bands for all non-union positions and hourly rates for all union positions.
- Through a motion, request the province designate “HRM as a public-sector body for the purposes” of fitting into the law passed two years ago.
- By motion, “direct any or all of the above actions be taken.”
The Chronicle Herald has published salaries or pay ranges of the mayor, councillors and senior municipal employees. City hall staff were obliging in 2010 when they supplied this newspaper with salary ranges for a baker’s dozen of top earners.
Coun. Tim Outhit (Bedford) said Friday he brought up the disclosure issue when he was on the recruiting committee seeking a new CAO before Butts was hired.
“This motion (in February) was from another councillor and I suspect a reaction to demands for increased transparency. A movement I strongly support,” Outhit said in an email message.
The motion was put forward by Coun. Jackie Barkhouse (Woodside-Eastern Passage).
“This is an issue that I had been giving a significant amount of thought to for several months prior to making the motion,” Barkhouse said in an email. “Salaries make up a considerable portion of our operational budget, and for the public to not have access to this type of information seems, to me, unreasonable.”
Barkhouse said she spoke with many staffers and “it was apparent this would be (a privacy) issue for some.” But other employees felt “disclosure provides a means of better protecting the public purse.”
Grow Up
Submitted by Halifaxguy on July 7, 2012 - 7:17am.
Many peoples salaries are disclosed to the shareholders in Proxy Circulars. You accept the job, you accept the disclosure. In a public company, compensation disclosure is required by securities law. The owners of the company deserve to know what they are paying their employees. Why shouldn't the owners of HRM, the taxpayers, know what we are paying our employees? In the past 10 years there has been an ever increasing disclosure of employee compensation, including pension and other benefits and it is part of the controls of running an operation. I can't imagine how some on Council even think this is debatable, especially in light of the flak they have taken for their lack of transparency.
Too Bad
Submitted by Keith P. on July 7, 2012 - 8:08am.
While the entire disclosure issue is vastly overblown - it appeals more to the "ain't it awful" segment of society who feel nobody should make more then $25K a year if you work in the public sector - the privacy issue is also being overblown here. The province has published salary data for decades. Now they have extended that to other areas of the public sector. None of those people have any privacy in the area of salary. Why municipalities are left out is hard to understand. The cost of the vast bureaucracy within HRM needs to be known to citizens. Publish it voluntarily.
Why Not
Submitted by bro tim on July 7, 2012 - 9:18am.
you can go online and find the salaries of members of the RCMP and the military. It can just be CAO - $xxxx, Deputy Chief Fire $xxxx, Clerk II $xxxxx, and this can be done for every position. There is no reason for secrecy.
Salaries for private
Submitted by ihave2say... on July 7, 2012 - 10:17am.
Salaries for private business, including all bonuses and perks, should also be posted online. What's the big secret? How could we possibly figure out if public salaries are fair unless we compare to private business for the same work? All of the union contracts are online and I suspect that if salaries were that far off of the norm there would be more caterwauling than there already is.
Don't agree with "ihave2say"
Submitted by Feedback on July 7, 2012 - 1:21pm.
Salaries are between the employer and the employee. They serve as an incentive to provide a service. Many employees for good reason don't want their salaries known by anyone other than their employer. The public doesn't pay a private employee and therefore shouldn't be involved with his/her salary.
However, all HRM employee's are employed by the taxpayer. It's amazing that some HRM employees don't permit the employer to know what it's paying it's employees.
Maybe in this case any emloyee that refuses to disclose his/her salary to the employer should be fired.
Disclose salaries
Submitted by smullan on July 8, 2012 - 9:46am.
If the employees of HRM weren't so grossly overpaid compared to the private sector there would be nothing to worry about for most of them.
However an even bigger issue than what they make is how many HRM employees we have floating around as compared to say 15 years ago.
Remember the Canada Games and the HRM volunteers who could leave their job to go watch...er..ah.... I mean "volunteer" at the Canada Games and still get paid.
Please let HRM release a growth chart of employees numbers and management positions and the increase since 1997. That would be worth looking at as we already know they are overpaid for what they do when compared to similar sized municipalities, particularly in the USA.
Agreed
Submitted by Feedback on July 8, 2012 - 6:25pm.
I don't know how many times I see an HRM road crew consisting of 6 or 7 watching one person doing the work.
Other times they're just waiting....maybe for someone to start work.
With this council? Good luck, folks.
Submitted by shawnino on July 9, 2012 - 8:44am.
This crowd can't even hold most of its meetings in public. Any hope of any transparency will be in vain.
Perhaps this is a good idea.
Submitted by Quiet Comment on July 10, 2012 - 5:33am.
If the Salaries are published people with realistic views will realize they do not get paid as much as they may think. However when you have folks like Feedback who do not understand someone else’s job but will criticise what they see anyway you wonder if the public would ever be satisfied. The salaries have been published before and there is always a little uproar from the public then it goes away and life goes on. Why is Barkhouse thinking so much about this? Is she trying to decide what she wants to do for a living after the election?