Full Disclosure Please

By Alan Halberstadt

One component of the April 10 Windsor Star article on the remuneration of Mayor Eddie Francis raised my eyebrows. I was surprised to learn that he received $51,300.96 in 2009 for serving on three Enwin Utilities committees, two of them as chair.

The timing of this part of the article coincides with a formal Council Question I submitted on March 29th, asking Enwin Utilities, the Windsor Utilities Commission and other city-owned corporations to disclose salaries over $100,000.

The sunshine legislation does not require city-owned corporations or entities with less than 10 percent funding from the province to disclose big salaries. To this end, arms-length bodies headed by Mayor Francis – Enwin, WUC, the Tunnel and Airport – have tended to keep the salaries of their top officials under wraps.

When pressed last year, the Mayor Francis did release the salary of airport CEO Federica Nazzani, but I can see no reason why such executive salaries shouldn’t be freely disclosed annually along with the other public service sunshine lists.

Enwin and WUC, in particular, have come under transparency scrutiny in the wake of the latest campaign by WUC to raise water rates by double digit percentages over the next three years.

One particular bone of contention with me is the Memorandum of Agreement between WUC and Enwin that sees the water board pay the electricity board over $9 million per year in management fees.

Mayor Francis insists that this is a good deal since it avoids duplication in providing HR, financial and other services. Although the Ontario Energy Board vets these fees, the document providing the details has yet to be released to the general Windsor public.

If and when it is released, part and parcel of the disclosure should be a list of the top salaries paid to both Enwin and WUC executives.

In closing today, I would like to compliment diligent Star reporter Doug Schmidt for unearthing a comparison survey of the salaries of Ontario’s mayors, which should be a simple function but most certainly isn’t when you have to chase down all of the tack-ons to the base salaries, plus variations of taxable benefits and tax free components.

That said, one thing that wasn’t evident in a sidebar entitled Mayoral Earnings, is the car Windsor Mayor Francis gets as an extra benefit of his job.