Fewer city employees on Sunshine List
List of public workers making over $100K in Ontario grows; top earner made $1.2M
The number of employees at Niagara Falls city hall making more than $100,000 per year has dropped by four, according to the 2016 edition of the so-called sunshine list.
A total of 63 City of Niagara Falls employees made the sunshine list, with a sum of all salaries totalling $7,510,006.06, a decrease from the 67 names and $7,844,970.59 in salaries in 2015.
There were 25 positions on the list in 2016, the same as in 2015.
The highest-paid employee again was chief administrative officer Ken Todd, who made a salary of $206,281.34, with $23,755.66 in taxable benefits. Todd made $186,054.11 in 2015, with $646.43 in taxable benefits.
Out of the 63 city employees in 2016, 47 were with the Niagara Falls Fire Department.
Out of the 67 city employees in 2015, 51 were with the Niagara Falls Fire Department.
According to the city’s website, approximately 550 people are permanent municipal employees. There is also a seasonal temporary workforce that fluctuates upon operational requirements.
Mayor Jim Diodati said in talking with human resources and the finance department, the decline in the number of employees on the list is because of senior staff retiring.
“Junior people come in at a lower rate of pay and senior people retire at typically the high end of the range,” he said.
Diodati said the municipality runs a “pretty tight ship.”
“We’ve been real fiscal in that regard. We’ve asked our staff to do more and there’s been a strong directive from council, for a number of years, for no more fulltime employees.”
He said for the “longest time,” Niagara Falls didn’t experience a lot of growth, which is changing.
“Now we’re experiencing significant growth. The last thing we want to do is slow down development and slow down investment in Niagara Falls. We want to encourage that because that’s what we need — we need to create more good jobs and sometimes you need to bring in some more staff at the counter to make sure we process the development applications.”
Diodati said council did authorize staff to bring in a couple more people to help them “get some of the projects out the door.”
“Whether it’s sewer and road improvements, or whether it’s helping to get developments to the approval stafe, we want to make sure we remove as much red tape as fast as we can so that we can be efficient with processing development and investment in the city.”
On Friday, the provincial government released the salaries of Ontario public service and broader public-sector employees who were paid $100,000 or more in 2016.
The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act applies to the provincial government, Crown agencies and corporations, Ontario Power Generation and subsidiaries, publicly funded organizations such as hospitals, municipalities, school boards, universities and colleges, and not-for-profit organizations that meet the funding threshold.
The $100,000 threshold has not changed since the sunshine list was enacted in 1996, and has not been adjusted to keep up with inflation.
If the salary threshold was adjusted for inflation, it would be $149,424 in today’s dollars, reducing the number of employees included in the compendium by 84 per cent, according to the province.
There are a number of reasons why employees may appear on the list, including employees who are progressing in their career, natural progression through salary ranges, overtime payments, retroactive pay awards, performance payments and payments that may be required on retirement.
TORONTO — The CEO of Ontario Power Generation earned nearly $1.2 million last year, making him the highest-paid publicsector employee in the province on a growing list of those earning $100,000 or more.
Jeff Lyash tops the so-called sunshine list with $1,155,900 in pay and $9,800 in taxable benefits, but next year he could be making even more.
OPG wrote a letter this week to the Ontario government saying its CEO would be paid a maximum of $1.9 million, but it is not changing a $3.8-million compensation cap the premier had asked to be revised.
The board “took great care” in calculating the $3.8-million regulatory cap, board chair Bernard Lord wrote, but it has voluntarily set the maximum compensation much lower, with the target at $1.5 million.
As a wage freeze lifts, all broader public-sector agencies have until September to post their proposals for new executive compensation packages under a framework that caps salaries at the 50th percentile of “appropriate comparators.” That means next year’s sunshine list totals could be much higher.
This year there are 123,410 workers on the list, up from 115,431 last year, earning salaries and benefits that total nearly $16 billion.
The $100,000 threshold has not changed since it was introduced by then-premier Mike Harris in 1996. While the premier has suggested she won’t be increasing it because that is still a lot of money, the government notes that if that were adjusted for inflation it would be almost $150,000 and 84 per cent fewer employees would be on the list.
The second highest earner — and the only other person on the list who made more than $1 million — is William Moriarty, the president and CEO of the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation, at about $1,046,000.
The rest of the top 10 is rounded out with the executive vice-president and chief investment officer of the Ontario Pension Board, OPG’s chief nuclear officer, and hospital presidents.
There were 59 people who cracked the half-a-million-dollar mark, including a radiologist at the Woodstock Hospital who made about $615,000. It also includes former OPG CEO Tom Mitchell, who left the company in 2015 but got a payout of $563,000 last year on top of the $1.59 million he received in 2015.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne was paid about $209,000 — which is not the highest of legislative employees. The director of broadcast and recording services, the clerk and the sergeant-atarms, all of whom retired last year, earned more. Wynne’s own chief of staff, Andrew Bevan, made about $313,000.
Pat Sorbara, who is on a leave of absence as Wynne’s deputy chief of staff, made $156,000. She was charged late last year with two counts of bribery under the Election Act, charges that were laid after she had already started the unpaid leave effective Oct. 3.
Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown made $181,000 and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath made $158,000.
The PCs note that the former president of the Union Pearson Express made $231,000 despite resigning last March.
“As everyday Ontarians are working harder than ever before but continuing to fall further behind, the Wynne Liberals are handing out massive raises to public-sector executives,” critic Todd Smith said.
The employer with the most workers on the list is OPG with 7,730 employees, including nuclear operators, senior technical engineers and electrical & control technicians. A janitor at OPG made $105,562 last year in salary and benefits.
The most common job is professor, with 5,790 on the list, followed by 3,725 associate professors. There are more than 15,000 police officers of different ranks on the list as well.
Meanwhile, the $4.5 million in pay received by Hydro One’s CEO is not on the sunshine list, even though the province owns 70 per cent of the company. The government intends to sell up to 60 per cent of Hydro One.
As soon as the initial shares were sold, Hydro One was no longer subject to the public-sector salary disclosure. Financial filings only require it to disclose the salaries of its CEO, CFO and next three highest-paid executives.
NDP critic Peter Tabuns said that’s not good enough.
“Ontario families struggling to keep up with rapidly skyrocketing hydro bills don’t know just how many well-positioned people are taking home untold billions from Hydro One,” he said.