There has been a lot of publicity about the "Money for Nothing committee" so I thought I would post Rob Anderson's explanation of how the salary of an MLA works. I know everyone complains about politicians pay so knowing exactly what they make would help the discussion. There is partisan spin on the information but I believe the numbers are correct.
Quote:
Every MLA is paid roughly $125,000 per year in salary - so about $10,500 a month. However, the PCs didn't want to be truthful about that so they set up a weird system to pay MLAs with that would confuse the public into thinking they weren't making as much as they actually were and give the Premier the power to punish MLAs that step out of line on their paychecks- Roughly $60,000 is base pay
- Roughly $36,000 is paid to MLAs for their "committee" work. In order to claim the $3000 per month ($36,000 per year) an MLA has to sit on 3 committees. The problem is however, the Government picks and chooses how many opposition MLAs can sit on each committee. Guy Boutilier and Heather Forsyth, for example, did not want to be on this ridiculous do-nothing privileges committee, they wanted to be on another committee instead, but the PCs came back and told them that they couldn't have more than 1 Wildroser on the committees they wanted, and so if they wanted their full salaries they would have to sit on one of the - what I call - "do-nothing" committees. The reason the PCs do this is so if a government MLA or opposition MLA gets out of line - like Heather Forsyth did when she criticized Ed Stelmach during the last election - they can cut back that MLAs salary as punishment. In Heathers' case the government wouldn't let her sit on any committees thus reducing her pay by $3000 for a time before later allowing her to be on 3 committees that they chose for her. Essentially its a way for the Premier to be able to bully dissenting MLAs on their paychecks
- Finally, there is a tax free allowance for MLA work-related expenses for about $30,000. Again this is done so the PCs can brag they only make a salary of $60,000...which is ridiculous of course
- There is also the big severance packages as well (3 months pay for every year served) - and do not forget that Cabinet gets about $100,000 in addition to what I've outlined above
- In addition PC MLAs get further pay to sit on committees that generally meet once a year (one got $16,000 per year to Chair the Idaho-Alberta relations council if you can believe it - and they didn't meet once). This is done to reward PC MLAs who didn't make it into Cabinet - a way of giving them Cabinet pay without them being Cabinet Ministers. The opposition does not sit on any of those committees...and we shouldn't because those committees shouldn't even exist in my opinion and we will get rid of them if elected
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My question is, How much money do you think MLA's should get paid? I used to lean towards paying top dollar to attract the best people but lately have been leaning towards governing being a public service so running is your way of giving back.