Brampton council’s image suffers in blatant grab for perks

Approving a pay hike while losing tax-free status is defensible. But the devil is in the details, like that $15,000 car allowance.

Thestar.com
Oct. 7, 2015
By Royson James

Ah, Brampton.

What did you do to deserve the suicidal sect now serving as your political representatives at city hall?

When you changed mayor in the last election, did you not rid yourselves of the primary symbol of municipal greed and arrogance? Who would have thought that the newest aggregation of the people’s choices would limp so noticeably back to the public trough?

Already fingered in the previous term as the little city with the highest paid mayor in Canada - more richly compensated than the peripatetic John Tory of Toronto or world-best Naheed Nenshi of Calgary - the new council appears intent on marching toward some kind of destined notoriety.

By a 6-5 vote, Brampton council has approved a 7 per cent pay hike that pushes their base salary to $84,495 - more than enough to run Canada’s ninth largest city. This action can even be defended.

Up to now, Brampton councillors had one-third of their salaries tax-free. The practice made sense for tiny municipalities where councillors had out-of-pocket expenses not covered by the city. Most councillors in Ontario cities stopped doing this after citizens twigged to it and after they started giving themselves expense accounts. Brampton continued the scam - until now.

The tax-free status meant Brampton councillors were actually getting about $90,000 a year all this time, though it looked like just under $79,000.

Now that they are coming clean, council listed their salary at $84,495, an increase from what has been reported, but a real reduction from their take-home pay.

But that’s where all sympathies end for this bunch. They manage to make up for lost dimes, big time.

Councillors jacked up their car allowance by $2,000 a year to a now whopping $15,000. With that kind of perk, one could get a fancy new car and free gas every year. There’s more.

They almost doubled their taxpayer-funded pension contributions to $11,573 a year (from $5,975). That obscene gesture must gall Brampton residents, many of whom must fund their own retirement nest egg. There’s more.

Seven of the 11 Brampton politicians also sit on Peel Region council, where they referee cross-border issues. For that they get another $55,000. Total take is $139,495. That’s $30,000 more than a Toronto councillor makes for more responsibilities and a larger budget in a bigger city, and they get zero car allowance.

It has not been a secret that the good citizens of the city northwest of Toronto were apoplectic at the salaries hauled down by their councillors and mayor over the past few years. So, what does the new council do? Jack up the rates, while lowering the rates, and hoping to confuse us all.

Egad. Do they think you Bramptonians are stupid?

The new mayor, Linda Jeffrey, seems to get it. She cut her salary by $50,000 on arrival and has refused to take the largesse the council would shower on itself now. And she’s not far away from securing a majority to turn the tide. But until then, the likes of veteran Councillor Gael Miles remain a millstone around the city’s neck.

Miles said she is taking the salary boost because a citizen-led compensation committee recommended it. “I respect the time and consideration they gave,” Miles told the Star’s San Grewal.

Now that might seem reasonable if you don’t know how these compensation committees work. In the annals of municipal government it is a rare compensation committee that does not recommend a salary hike for councillors. Sometimes, the citizens are friends or colleagues or political allies of the politicians. Almost always, they compare the politicians to senior executives of corporations and conclude they be compensated similarly.

So it is a recognized and repeated practice for city councillors to set up such committees as a surefire way of boosting their own salaries, with impunity. They can hide behind the committee.

Usually, the councillors show some false modesty, and accept a much-lower-than-recommended hike, patting themselves on the back.

Such a scam. And so transparently so that most cities and towns have abandoned the practice. Not Brampton. At least, not yet.

All that’s needed is for one of the six councillors to repent, follow Jeffrey’s lead, refuse to be leaders at the public trough, show some restraint, defer the raise until after the next election and help change Brampton’s Porky the Pig image.

Any one of Councillors Jeff Bowman, Grant Gibson, Elaine Moore, Michael Palleschi, Doug Whillans and Miles will do.