Mayor John Tory calls for parking authority salaries to be released
A Star story revealed the salaries of top executives at the parking authority have been kept secret from the public.
Thestar.com
July 12, 2017
By Jennifer Pagliaro
Mayor John Tory says a loophole preventing disclosure of top executive salaries at the Toronto Parking Authority should be closed and those figures released.
“All the money in the Toronto Parking Authority is public money,” he told the Star Wednesday. “I asked today that they just find a way to make this information public.”
His comments were prompted by a Star story Tuesday about how the salaries of executives, including President Lorne Persiko, who is currently on administrative leave pending an ongoing investigation, are kept secret.
Official requests for salary information have been denied by the parking authority and fought with a hired employment law firm. The Star has appealed to the province’s information commissioner.
While the salaries of many heads of city agencies and corporations appear on the provincial public disclosure (Sunshine) list, Persiko’s does not.
The city says that’s because they are exempt under public disclosure rules. As a self-sufficient agency they receive no public funds.
But the arms-length agency, which manages the city’s more than 200 Green P parking lots and 17,500 on-street parking spaces is responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of city assets. According to TPA documents, 50 cents of every dollar it earns is transferred to the city.
“This notion to me that there aren’t any public funds ... to me is incredibly lacking in transparency,” Tory said. “They’re all public funds.”
City spokesperson Wynna Brown said the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act outlines what is an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy, and that an individual’s salary is “generally seen” as an unjustified invasion. Salary ranges and benefits are not protected information.
Brown provided salary ranges in an email Wednesday.
For Persiko’s president position, the base salary range is $246,500 to $333,500 - which is in line with what the heads of other city agencies earn.
That range does not include taxable benefits, which can include things like bonuses and parking. It’s unclear what, if any, taxable benefits Persiko and other executives receive.
In 2016, Dianne Young, CEO of Exhibition Place earned $231,629 including taxable benefits, the Toronto Zoo’s CEO John Tracogna made $252,361 and TTC CEO Andy Byford was paid $354,810.
The base salary range for other top executives at the parking authority is between $168,969 and $202,772.
In representations responding to the Star’s appeal, the parking authority also argued that the information should not be released because it was held in a software system used for human resources purposes and should be excluded from disclosure rules.
Tory called the inability to disclose the salaries a “loophole” — one that should be closed and the rules changed.
“What I’ve asked is they just find a way to fix that, because I think it should be public.”
The parking authority is currently under new direction, with interim president Andy Koropeski appointed by a temporary watchdog board on Monday.
The board, now chaired by City Manager Peter Wallace, was put in place by council last week after the city’s auditor general presented her findings into a North York land deal that has since been halted.
Auditor General Beverly Romeo-Beehler found the deal being pursued by the parking authority for a parcel of land at Finch Ave. West and Arrow Rd. would have seen the parking authority overpay by $2.63 million.
Brown said Wallace is “committed to ensuring appropriate transparency.”
