Thursday, October 15, 2009

This Is NOT To Be Confused With Fiscal Prudence

So, uncle Ed is going to take a 15% pay cut.

It almost sounds good, doesn't it?

Until you remember the 34% pay RAISE he gave himself a year ago.

Cabinet ministers will give back 10 per cent of their cabinet allowances (a cut of $6,391 per minister), but also does not include base salary and committee pay.

The premier's overall pay cut amounts to about six per cent of his total salary, which was about $213,000 prior to today's announcement. Cabinet ministers will each give back about three per cent of their total individual salary, which was $184,000 heading into today.


This is important - it's not really a 15% cut - it's less than that when you account for the extra "perks" our politicians receive for sitting on committees and other bits of pay that make up a sizeable fraction of the total pay that our politicians get. $6,000 for a cabinet minister (on an overall salary of $184,000) is peanuts - it's symbolic at most, and makes virtually no difference to the cost of operating the legislature that Alberta's taxpayers fund.

But, it's not like I've seen anything from Team Ed that suggests any ability to balance the books or otherwise manage finances.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

One aspect that we all forget is that one third (1/3) of an M.L.A's salary is exempt from income tax. This is a long time provision of the federal Income Tax Act . So given his full salary of $213,000+ Mr Stelmach legally avoids income tax on more income than the average Albertan earns in a year. Some provinces (Saskatchewan is one I think) have withdrawn this exemption but not Alberta. MAS

Collective Punishment

Ever since Pierre Poilievre opened his mouth and declared that Trans Women need to be banned from washrooms and locker rooms , there's b...