City releases compensation disclosure list; some officials want more
Posted Jun 24, 2015 5:39 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The City of Calgary released a much-anticipated list Wednesday, but much of the discussion at City Hall was about what it didn’t include.
The compensation disclosure list shows the salary ranges for positions from city manager to transit scheduler and includes over 13,000 positions.
Council made the request to administration for the list in the fall of 2014 and excludes releasing the names of those who make $100,000, known as a sunshine list which is given at the provincial level and other jurisdictions such as Ontario.
It’s the first report of what will be an annual list and City Manager Jeff Fielding said it’s a good step.
“I think this is great in terms of disclosure, I think it’s really important,” he said.
Most full-time employees are in the $50,000-$75,000 range at 5,009, while 4,298 are in the $75,000-$100,000 bracket.
1,741 employees make up to $125,000, 494 make up to $150,000 and 221 make over $150,000.
Fielding said while it’s important to release info, there are some challenges, especially for those in the lower brackets.
“I don’t think people like to have their salaries in the newspaper, I don’t think any one of us really wants to have that, but as a public servant, that’s something you need to get accustomed to,” he said, adding the list can also reinforce negative stereotypes of public employees being overpaid and underworked.
“I think the stereotypical views in a city like Calgary are not accurate, but we are suspect to them and so you have to deal with those types of opinions, especially in downturns where people are losing their jobs and there’s a higher unemployment rate,” he said.
Fielding and Human Resources Manager Doris Wilson said the goal of Calgary’s public salaries is not too lead or to lag behind other cities, but to be fair and competitive and as for a potential sunshine list, Fielding said we could arrive at that stage.
“I suspect this is an evolution, I suspect that eventually we’ll settle on a list that looks very similar to other jurisdictions that are reporting on them,” he said.
One of those jurisdictions is Ontario (where Fielding worked for 13 years) and in 2014, 111,438 public sector workers were paid more than $100,000.
Councillors present at Wednesday’s meeting were blunt in pushing for the same in Calgary.
“It’s a list, it’s not a sunshine list and it’s not good enough,” Ward 13 Councillor Diane Colley-Urquhart said, adding she hopes there will be provincial support for the effort. “I know the premier’s plate is full, but this could just be with a stroke of a pen that we change this.”
Colley-Urquhart and Ward 1 Councillor Ward Sutherland countered arguments against a sunshine list, such as leading to people resigning from current positions, lack of applications for positions and making it difficult to to hire.
“It doesn’t raise rates, they can still hire people, etc., so all this fear and fearmongering that’s happened in this debate is now a moot point, we should move forward,” Sutherland said.
But Mayor Naheed Nenshi isn’t easily swayed.
“People actually see it and go hey if Jane makes that much, how come I don’t make that much and it leads to an inflationary aspect,” Nenshi said. “I also think that people do deserve their own privacy, so balancing off the transparency that is important with people’s privacy and not inadvertently causing our cost to go up, I think is the hard part here.”
“I’d have to figure out how those concerns could be met, I’m not sure they could.”
Nenshi also addressed the Ontario legislation.
“I frankly think that the one in Ontario is not useful at all, it’s too big, it covers too many people, it has inflationary impacts to it and it doesn’t really give public information that’s helpful for them to understand how the government is spending their money,” he said.
To view the full list, click here.
