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Geoff Summers: Remuneration Authority Chair on local councillors seeing bigger pay increases · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks't be follow
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  Speaker 2: Now, despite the state of the economy, there is one
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  Speaker 2: profession that's been benefiting from pretty solid pay rises, and
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  Speaker 2: that's local councilors. The average salary of district and city
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  Speaker 2: councilors went up nine point eight one percent last year,
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  Speaker 2: and the biggest salary increase was at the Western Bay
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  Speaker 2: of Plenty District Council, where the average salary went up
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  Speaker 2: fifty seven percent to just shy of eighty one thousand dollars.
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  Speaker 2: Now the remuneration authority of the guys who set the salaries,
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  Speaker 2: or at least the overall pool, and Jeff Summers is
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  Speaker 2: the chair. He's with us now, Hi, Jeff, Yeah, got
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  Speaker 2: how how did the Western Bay of Plenty Council go
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  Speaker 2: up so much?
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  Speaker 3: Well, they haven't actually, and I don't know where those
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  Speaker 3: figures came from. The I know there's a plenty lob
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  Speaker 3: of political lobby group has been bending figures around, but
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  Speaker 3: we don't know where they got them from. But we
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  Speaker 3: haven't set the Western Bay of Plenty District councilsorries yet.
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  Speaker 3: In fact, that's going to come up at our next meeting.
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  Speaker 3: We set the poll and then as a consultation process
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  Speaker 3: to allow local factors to be brought into the mix,
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  Speaker 3: we asked the local council to put a proposal to
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  Speaker 3: us on how they would allocate that pool, and then
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  Speaker 3: we look at it. I understand their allocation has come
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  Speaker 3: true to us, but we haven't dealt with that yet
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  Speaker 3: and we don't always agree. We have sent them back
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  Speaker 3: on occasions, but I'd be very surprised if its fifty
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  Speaker 3: seven percent. Their poll was one of the larger ones
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  Speaker 3: because after the local government elections, we do a review
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  Speaker 3: of the entire sector, which is really complicated as you
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  Speaker 3: can imagine the seventy six different councils, and they were
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  Speaker 3: one of the bigger ones. Their pool went up about
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  Speaker 3: twenty three percent because their population and expenditure and assets
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  Speaker 3: and so forth all increased, as had the estimated workload
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  Speaker 3: of the council has gone from point five to point six. Now.
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  Speaker 3: They also got from the Local Government Commission Commission last
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  Speaker 3: year to reduce the number of councilors from eleven to nine,
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  Speaker 3: so we've now got nine people doing the work that
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  Speaker 3: eleven people used to do, And most people would say,
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  Speaker 3: if I'm going to be doing more work than what
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  Speaker 3: you know some other people used to do, I want
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  Speaker 3: more money for it. So I would expect that they
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  Speaker 3: would have got a reasonable increase, But you know a
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  Speaker 3: number of councilors got very little. That's the way the
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  Speaker 3: system works.
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  Speaker 2: Hold on, Jeff, can I ask you some questions if
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  Speaker 2: you don't mind. So, is it possible that you've set
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  Speaker 2: the pool for the Western Bay of plenty, which is
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  Speaker 2: seven hundred and thirty odd thousand dollars split between nine
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  Speaker 2: councilors comes out at eighty thousand, eighty one thousand dollars.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, well, yeah, it won't because they don't do it
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  Speaker 3: that way.
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  Speaker 2: But okay, and so if you say yes to their proposal,
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  Speaker 2: then it will be a fifty seven percent pay increase.
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  Speaker 3: No, because all nine of them won't be getting the
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  Speaker 3: same amount.
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  Speaker 2: An average, isn't there will be?
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  Speaker 3: Well, okay, you can work on averages heither, but I'm
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  Speaker 3: not allowed to. I've got to be accurate. The law
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  Speaker 3: requires me to do certain things.
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  Speaker 2: How did you back up their pay that much, though,
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  Speaker 2: is what I'm trying to get to. How did you
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  Speaker 2: make the pool.
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  Speaker 3: Go up that much simply by reference to the entire sector.
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  Speaker 3: Now it is really complicated, and unfortunately that's not useful
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  Speaker 3: for radio. I understand that. But after we did this
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  Speaker 3: system about eight years ago, because nobody had found a
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  Speaker 3: reasonable system for paying local government to that date, there
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  Speaker 3: was an awful lot of work went into it, and
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  Speaker 3: after each local government election we spend months doing this
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  Speaker 3: and some on every there will be one council that
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  Speaker 3: gets lucky because their factors like population and so forthare
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  Speaker 3: will have gone up more than everybody else's, and others
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  Speaker 3: won't have gone up very much at all, and they
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  Speaker 3: won't literally get anything out of it. But you know,
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  Speaker 3: this year, Western Bay of Plenty was one of the
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  Speaker 3: lucky ones. But there were some really good reasons for that.
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  Speaker 3: The population that the councilors look after has increased, Their
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  Speaker 3: operating expenditure has gone up thirty five percent, the assets
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  Speaker 3: they control have gone up twenty six percent. You know,
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  Speaker 3: there are some big responsibilities that councilors whole.
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  Speaker 2: All right, Jeff, thank you for running us through it. Appreciated. Jeff,
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  Speaker 2: your Cicada sound lovely. Jeff Summer's remuneration authority.
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