Saint John councillor pushes salary disclosure

A Saint John councillor is pushing to have the city post the salary ranges for all of its public servants on its website, following the lead of other cities and the provincial government.

Universities and municipalities fell under the province’s Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act last September.

The added layer of transparency forced many institutions to start publishing salaries of their staff.

The legislature's Standing Committee on Public Accounts releases a document each year that lists salary ranges for all provincial government bureaucrats earning more than $60,000.

Now, the city of Fredericton also lists a series of city jobs on its website and offers salary ranges for those positions.

Saint John Coun. Greg Norton said he wants similar job titles and salary ranges collected on the city’s website.

"I believe that it holds a standard of accountability that at the end of the day we're requiring a certain degree of performance from staff and those that we hire and that needs to align with the compensation that they receive," Norton said.

CBC News has already collected that information for the province’s four largest cities and posted all salaries of $100,000 or higher. The information was obtained using a series of Right to Information requests.

Saint John has 13 city jobs that pay more than $100,000. The city clerk is paid just under that threshold with a salary range of $91,601.

The city manager in Saint John has a pay range of $167,500 to $200,000, which is the highest salary of a municipal bureaucrat of the four largest cities.

Norton said that adding the salaries to the city’s website is important for the public’s right to know.

"It lets the taxpayers of Saint John compare the performance of their organization — city hall — with the compensation that's given to the individuals that are actually running it," he said.