Give the NDP government a pat on the back for one thing — dealing with the often grotesque overcompensation among some public-sector executives in Alberta.
This week it was school superintendents. Back in April it was presidents, vice-chancellors and chief executive officers of 20 publicly funded university and colleges. And last year it was the presidents and vice-presidents of ABCs — agencies, boards and commissions.
Under the former Tory government, executive compensation was permitted to go all over the map, especially during the time of former Premier Alison Redford.
Average compensation for Alberta public-sector executives was above the national average — sometimes well above. And the overcompensation contributed to a culture of entitlement in which senior management felt entirely justified receiving outsized salaries and monstrous perks.
Moreover, there were no independent reviews that sought to compare public sector compensation to similar jobs and levels of responsibility in the private sector.
The New Democrats have tried to change that. Their recent moves have brought Alberta public-sector pay more in keeping with at least public-sector standards in other large provinces, such as Ontario, B.C. and Quebec.
Before the recent changes, the numbers were often shocking.
For instance, Edmonton Catholic Schools superintendent Joan Carr made $426,824 last year. That’s considerably more than the superintendents of Edmonton and Calgary Public Schools, both of whom manage noticeably larger operations.
Under the new rules, brought in by Education Minister David Eggen on Friday, Carr will see her pay cut a whopping 28 per cent when her contract is renewed in August. To Carr’s credit, she plans to stay on two more years despite the reduction in pay.
The NDP have also eliminated what they call “outlier” perks such as $1,200 a year for gym membership, $1,200 a year for one superintendent’s spouse to attend school board events, $10,000 for “incidentals” (that’s a lot of incidentals) and $10,000 a year towards one super’s children’s university tuition.
From now on, there will be five pay grades for superintendents depending on the size of the boards they oversee, with salaries ranging from $60,000 to a maximum of $275,000.
In all, 67 of 74 superintendents will see their pay cut by an average of 10 per cent for a total savings of $1.5 million (which the government plans to spend in classrooms).
A similar five-level, cost-cutting pay grid imposed on university and college executives nearly two months ago should save a further $5 million. And reduction in the pay of senior ABC managers, announced last spring, could save as much as $16 million more.
These sums ($22.5 million in all) are tiny against provincial spending of $56 billion and annual deficits in the range of $10 billion, but they are an important step towards breaking the mentality of entitlement among senior public-sector managers — the feeling that they are owed lavish lifestyles at taxpayers’ expense.
Now the Notley government just has to deal with the overcompensation of Alberta Health Services’ hundreds of executives and managers.