Stephen Vance, Staff
The Municipality of Meaford has released their annual list of employees who earn more than $100,000 per year as required by the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act.
Each year organizations that receive public funding from the Province of Ontario must disclose the names, positions, salaries, and total taxable benefits of employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year; the compiled list is commonly referred to as the ‘sunshine list’.
In 1996 the Mike Harris Conservative government passed the Ontario Public Disclosure Act, which the government of the day suggested would offer transparency and would highlight increasing spending on public sector payrolls. Prior to 2009, Meaford had no employees earning enough to land them on the list, but that changed when former CAO Frank Miele became the first with a reported income of $118,000 in 2009. The original threshold of $100,000 to earn a spot on the annual Sunshine List has never been adjusted for inflation which has resulted in an ever growing number of public sector employees being included in the list. In the first year of the list’s publication it included 4,756 public sector employees, while last year more than 110,000 made it onto the list. Had the threshold been adjusted for inflation annually, public sector employees would today need to earn more than $145,000 in order to be included on the list.
The number of Meaford’s municipal employees finding themselves on the annual ‘sunshine list’ has also grown steadily over the past five years, and with the release this week of their 2016 salary disclosure, the municipality reports that a total of six employees earned more than $100,000 in 2016, though two of them are no longer with the municipality (Fire Chief Mike Molloy retired late last year, and Clerk Robert Tremblay left the municipality in December to take a position in another municipality).
The following staff with the Municipality of Meaford are included on the 2016 salary disclosure list, as submitted to the Province in March, 2017.
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Robert Armstrong, Director of Development & Environmental Services – Salary of $116,483.08, Taxable benefits $1,091.07
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Dan Buttineau, Director of Parks, Recreation & Culture – Salary of $116,483.08, Taxable benefits $1,091.07
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Darcy Chapman, Treasurer/Director of Financial Services & Infrastructure Management – Salary of $116,483.08, Taxable benefits $1,091.07
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Mike Molloy, Fire Chief – Salary of $108,526.60, Taxable benefits $1,089.90
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Denyse Morrissey, Chief Administrative Officer – Salary of $150,059.00, Taxable benefits $1,427.97
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Robert Tremblay, Clerk/Director of Legislative & Protective Services – Salary of $112,147.68, Taxable Benefits $1,076.83
