Burnaby staff won’t be preparing a report adding up how much money councillors earn from sitting on various government bodies.
At a meeting March 25, Coun. Richard Lee recommended asking staff to prepare a public financial report.
All local governments in B.C. are required to report on how much they pay their elected officials, but politicians can earn more by sitting on other boards such as Metro Vancouver Regional District, TransLink’s Mayors' Council or the Municipal Finance Authority of BC.
Each body separately reports how much its officials earn.
Lee’s motion for a consolidated report comes as Mayor Mike Hurley has been fielding criticism for his consolidated pay as mayor and board member of Metro Vancouver.
Global News reported Hurley’s total compensation in 2023, before he was elected Metro chair, as $393,075.
But none of Lee’s fellow council members supported his motion, shutting down any discussion on the issue around the council table — except for a comment by Lee: “It’s a shame.”
'A waste of staff's time'
Hurley told the Burnaby NOW after the meeting he didn’t think staff needed to be given “a whole pile of work” to put all the financial documents together.
“It’s a waste of staff’s time,” Hurley said.
But he also said: “It’s all publicly available information … You could find it out quite easily.”
Lee disagreed.
“I don’t see any staff time to be wasted here. As the mayor probably said, ‘Well, it’s available on the internet,’ right? So why should (it) take the staff so long to find out?”
“I think the cost is minimal, but the benefit to the public is knowing what’s behind … these positions,” he said.
Lee said he’s asking for more transparency and accountability.
“I’m very disappointed that we didn’t get a chance to discuss that.”
He added the provincial government should require councillors to report their earnings from all different government bodies.
Currently, councillors are required to disclose certain assets, debts and sources of income as part of transparency measures legislated by the province, but the disclosure forms do not require dollar values of compensation received.
'Increasing scrutiny'
Stewart Prest, a lecturer in political science at UBC and municipal politics commentator, said refusing to discuss the issue will do little to address public concern.
“The sense of stonewalling that comes from a failure to even discuss the issue is not going to help it go away in the long run,” Prest told the NOW.
“It’s better to meet the issue head-on and to actually deal with the critiques and discuss possibilities for greater transparency.”
Prest added various Metro Vancouver institutions and committees are coming under “increasing scrutiny.”
Metro Vancouver’s North Shore Waste Water Treatment Plant project has more than quadrupled its original budget, now costing almost $4 billion, but media have also zeroed in on the regional government’s international travel and CAO remuneration.
Prest said voters don’t have a clear understanding around what Metro Vancouver does and why it’s important.
If the issues continue unaddressed, he said the region could find itself in a “larger discussion” of whether it’s still in the interest of the Lower Mainland to exist as a series of independent but coordinating municipalities, or whether pressure will build on the provincial government to consider amalgamation.
“Better to deal with these issues here and now and to address them head-on rather than to allow pressure to continue to build and to create cries for a larger, more radical solution.”
