Why sunshine list took so long to rise
Delay kindles desire for peek at salaries
The weather Friday over much of Alberta might have included clouds and snow, but the day was supposed to have been brilliantly sunny, politically speaking, that is.
It was the day the government was to release its sunshine list disclosing the names and salaries of civil servants who make more than $100,000 a year, the day the premier said would show she had fulfilled a promise “to lead a more open, transparent and accountable government.”
The sunshine of government accountability was scheduled to illuminate the nooks and crannies of civil service salaries, benefits and severance pay via a new web page at 9 a.m.
Journalists and opposition MLAs — and more than a few civil servants keenly interested to see how their salaries stacked up against their colleagues’ — hovered over their emails awaiting the news release directing them to the web page. Nine o’clock came and went, so did 10 and 11. By noon the sun still wasn’t shining.
On the surface, all was quiet at the legislature, but underneath the government was in an uproar. Officials in the premier’s office were on the phones to the bureaucrats in charge of releasing the list. What was going on? The bureaucrats explained that because of a temporary court injunction issued on Thursday protecting the privacy of Crown prosecutors, the list could not include the names and salaries of those prosecutors. As a result, the bureaucrats had been working overnight to redact the information on 300 Crown prosecutors from the list of 3,400 civil servants.
Yes, but why was it taking so long?
It was a question being asked not just by irritated journalists eager to be the first to Tweet the list, but by Premier Alison Redford herself. Sources say Redford was annoyed by the delay.
The bureaucrats were making the administration look incompetent and making Redford look as if she was breaking a promise.
Journalists, always happy to add salt to a government wound, began asking why the government hadn’t realized Crown prosecutors were so angry with the sunshine list that one of them was going to apply for a court injunction. Hadn’t the government anticipated something like this?
The answer: apparently not.
The day grew on and still no web page. At 2:30 p.m., government officials held a technical briefing for journalists to show how the new web page would work. Very helpful except for the fact there was no actual web page ready for journalists to call up.
At 3:30, Don Scott, associate minister of accountability, transparency and transformation, held a news conference to boast how Alberta had the best sunshine laws in the country.
Yes, but there still wasn’t any sunshine list at that point for anyone to see just how accountable, transparent and transformative the government was being.
On a side note, Alberta’s new sunshine legislation is not particularly sunny compared with that in other provinces. Ontario’s list has 88,000 people on it and includes the name of pretty much anyone receiving a salary over $100,000 from taxpayers’ money. That includes not only civil servants but a long list of people such as municipal officials, hospital staff, government agency staff, university administrators — and Crown prosecutors.
Alberta’s sunshine list, by comparison, includes just 3,400. In the constellation of sunshine legislation, it’s a red dwarf.
But it’s a start. And we finally got to see it for ourselves at 4:03 Friday afternoon. It’s an interesting read, not just from a public policy perspective but from a purely human perspective. Who doesn’t want to know what your neighbour makes?
Peter Watson, the top civil servant at the legislature, earned the highest salary in 2013, taking home $342,000, plus another $107,000 in non-cash benefits including pension contributions.
Redford’s chief of staff, Farouk Adatia, made $316,000 in 2013 plus $41,000 in cash benefits, including vacation pay. Her director of communications, Stefan Baranski, earned $199,000 that year plus $31,000 in cash benefits.
Besides sparking a flurry of visits to the government’s web page, the list ignited some outraged comments from the opposition, first among them the NDP, who predictably harrumphed over how the government is showering money on senior executives while trying to squeeze a wage freeze from front-line civil servants who are members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.
The list will provide entertainment for months to come — as well as giving ammunition for the opposition the next time the government makes a mistake or cuts services (or can’t release a sunshine list on time).
It won’t be just the opposition complaining about a problem but complaining while pointing out this is a government that pays its top civil servant $450,000 a year in salary and benefits — about double what we pay the premier.