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SASKATOON The Saskatchewan government is making no commitments about its new revenue sharing formula, despite a fresh campaign for stable funding by the associations representing hundreds of municipalities across the province.

While insiders say they don’t expect major changes to the formula, Government Relations Minister Warren Kaeding would not say if it would remain linked to provincial sales tax revenue, as it has been since 2009.

“It’s still the most sound method to go with,” Kaeding acknowledged while speaking with reporters at the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities’ midterm convention in Saskatoon.

“I can’t say right now that it’s still going to be linked to (PST), but that’s certainly one method that’s proved to be very effective and proved to be very reliable and very predictable,” he added.

Kaeding also hinted strongly in his address to hundreds of rural municipal councillors and reeves that any money paid to cities, towns and RMS could also be tied to improved governance structures — a point insiders echoed.

“We’re handling public money. This isn’t private money. This is taxpayers’ money … We have to be good stewards,” Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association President Gordon Barnhart said Wednesday.

Barnhart said it’s his understanding that government, like SUMA, is encouraging good governance practices. Kaeding, however, demurred when asked if that is a result of recent issues such as financial problems in the RM of Mckillop.

“There’s kind of a checklist of things that we need to see on a regular basis — audited financial statements, conflict of interest guidelines. All of those are already in place. Can we maybe improve that or maybe add some more things to that? Certainly got some input on that.”

The province pays one point of provincial sales tax revenue from two years previously to more than 700 municipalities — an estimated $241.1 million this year.

The formula has been a source of anxiety since before the 201718 budget, when municipalities aware of the government’s ballooning deficit campaigned hard to preserve the formula, only to lose $33 million in grants paid in lieu of taxes.

Earlier this year, the province froze payouts at the current level for two years, meaning a one-point PST increase and PST base expansion — which boosted revenues from the tax to $2.1 billion from $1.2 billion last year — won’t immediately take effect.

Asked about the extra $808 million in PST revenue the province collected last year, Kaeding acknowledged that the tax pool has “changed dramatically,” and that is one “of the aspects that we would need to look at.”

Kaeding told the SARM convention the new formula could be in place as early as the spring, when the 2019-2020 budget is released.