Keep exact local salaries off Sunshine List
Recommendation warns of wage inflation
Calgary city bureaucrats should be subjected to a much dimmer “Sunshine List” than their peers in the Alberta government or many other Canadian cities, officials are recommending to council.
Unlike most systems that disclose the names and compensations of all high-earning employees — $100,000 or more, for the Alberta list — Calgary’s proposed system would name all staff and all positions, but not their actual salaries.
Each worker’s name would appear next to his or her position and pay range, according to a report produced for Tuesday’s meeting of council’s priorities and finance committee.
The legal and human resources departments urge exclusions to this disclosure policy — but the details of those are being kept from the public eye. Calgary Police Service, one of the city’s most expensive departments, won’t be part of the 2015 disclosure launch, nor will cityfunded agencies such as the library and convention centre.
Earlier this year, Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart proposed officials come up with ideas for a disclosure list for Calgary staff earning six-digit pay. Alberta’s first Sunshine List comes out this year, and they’ve long been in place for municipalities and provincial governments in British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The Alberta government left it up to municipalities to decide on their own disclosure practices.
Calgary civil servants are recommending a less-detailed list to “balance transparency to citizens with the right to privacy for city employees,” the committee report says.
“The recommendation attempts to disclose as much information as possible under existing legislation without exposing the city to risk while using existing resources and budgets,” the report states.
It refers to a commonly cited academic paper, which suggested that at Ontario universities, disclosing specific employees’ salaries may lead to wage inflation, as staff use comparative salaries as a bargaining chip.
Several legal and third-party opinions referred to in the report on this transparency measure are being kept secret for now under privacy legislation.