A Burnaby city staff report wants fewer of civic employees' salaries made public.
That’s a bad idea.
An interesting report is on tonight’s Burnaby council agenda involving this issue.
The city manager’s report wants council to approve a resolution to the Union of B.C. Municipalities that would “increase ‘statement of financial information’ reporting thresholds.”
Basically, the law says that cities must make public the names and remuneration of staffers who make at least $75,000, as well as payments to suppliers of goods or services in the amount of $25,000 or higher.
The point of the law is to provide some transparency into how taxpayer money is spent. Some call it a 'sunshine list' because it sheds light on government spending.
According to the City of Burnaby report, the $75,000 and $25,000 thresholds were set in 2002.
“Inflation has risen significantly since the last update of the Act, and local government employee remuneration, under collective agreements, has risen accordingly,” says the report.
This means more names of civic employees are being added to the list, as well as more suppliers.
“These increases place an undue administrative reporting burden on local governments,” says the report.
I have a few thoughts on this, starting with the fact that, yeah, transparency does put a burden on cities.
So what?
Nobody said democracy was easy and government transparency is vital to maintaining democracy.
Freedom of Information Act requests are also time consuming but they, too, are vital to democracy.
We need more information made public, not less and this is a request for less information to be made available. This includes what money is being spent on goods and services by the city.
And is this really just about an administrative “burden” or is it because city staffers don’t like their names and salaries being made public?
I’m sure that must suck, but these folks have chosen to work for government and the SOFI lists are not a secret. They come out every single year and have for a long time.
If you want more privacy, go work in the private sector.
You can follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44
