New Westminster passes pay transparency motion

After several local mayors who serve various boards like the Metro Vancouver Regional District and TransLink had their salaries questioned, another city council is taking pay transparency to the next level.

On Monday evening, New Westminster city council passed a motion so the public can look over the financial records of elected officials in the Royal City.

“The public can now look at one single report once a year and they can find out exactly how much their local elected officials are making, not only for their salary to be a city councillor but also all the other stipends, all the other pay they’re collecting for other regional bodies. It’ll all be consolidated in one report,” Coun. Daniel Fontaine told 1130 NewsRadio.

That report may be made available as early as this summer.

“If you do some work at E-Comm, or Metro Vancouver, TransLink, the Municipal Finance Authority, the list goes on and on. There’s a lot of very lucrative appointments you can get if you’re an elected official in your local council,” Fontaine said.

“Before you weren’t able to find out how much that politician was actually collecting by way of their salary. Now in New Westminster, through this new motion, one single report and you’ll be able to read exactly how much those elected officials are collecting.”

Fontaine believes all this information should be centralized.

“For example, the mayor of Burnaby, he makes just under $400,000. Some of the other mayors in the region are making $350,000 to $400,000, but you could never figure out how much they were making unless you have a single, consolidated report and now New Westminster is taking that giant leap forward in terms of openness and transparency.”

In this case, elected officials include the mayor and all councillors, including Fontaine.

“One of our councillors sits on a planning committee for Metro Vancouver, her salary will now be reported. The mayor is on the mayor’s TransLink Council, and his salary will be reported,” he said.

“So, we already have examples of how that money that those individual politicians are collecting will all be included in that report. Any per diems, honourariums, any payment you receive as an elected official in whatever way they define it … all that income you’re getting from these other regional bodies, it will all be included in that single, consolidated report.”

Richmond city council passed a similar motion last month.

“I think the province of British Columbia should be doing this. This should not even be something that cities should be doing. I’m really encouraging the minister of municipal affairs to do this provincially so the media can get access to this, and the public can get access to this. This should not be something that’s being done city by city.”

Although Fontaine is on board with the motion, he describes it as a stopgap.

“It’s a bit of a band-aid because we do not have a provincial, single consolidated report. For example, I had to piece together 27 different financial reports just to figure out how much the mayor of Burnaby was making.”

In addition to transparency, Fontaine says the other goal is to show the public how many different directions mayors are being pulled into.

“Much of this work on these regional bodies is conducted during business hours. I have seen it first-hand where elected officials pass off a meeting locally and then they go to a regional meeting because that regional meeting pays them the $547. I think the taxpayers and the public deserve to know because they’re the people who hired them to begin with.”

Just over a month ago, the premier weighed in on this controversy after it was revealed some mayors were earning, in some cases, more than him by serving multiple appointments.

David Eby said, “I do have confidence in the independent governance review that’s underway at Metro Vancouver. We’ll make sure that the scope includes all aspects of governance.”

The Metro Vancouver Regional District has been under months of scrutiny, with questions over international trips, high salaries, and oversight repeatedly coming up since April of last year.

The beleaguered district has also faced heavy criticism over its handling of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant. The estimated cost of that project ballooned to $3.86 billion last year.