John MacDonald: Regional council's tone deaf $40k pay increase - Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

What would you say to a $40,000 pay rise? Yes please?

If you’re the chief executive of Environment Canterbury regional council, you would.

It’s been revealed that in the last financial year, Stefanie Rixecker’s pay increased by 9.3 %, upping her salary by $40,000 to just under $480,000, making her the highest-paid regional council boss in the country.

And this wasn’t one of those decisions by the Independent Remuneration Authority, which sets the pay levels for politicians, which also gives politicians the excuse of saying they have no control over what they get paid.

This decision was made by the elected council members. An increase that the chair of ECAN, Craig Pauling, is busy defending. He says the $40,000 pay increase is "appropriate and deserved".

Appropriate and deserved because the chief executive is a respected leader and is running ECAN during a tricky time for local government.

Craig Pauling says: “It is important to our council that we have a high-performing and respected chief executive at the helm, during this significant time of change for local government.”

Time of change alright. Which is what the Government has been telling councils. And I imagine the noise from Wellington will get even louder when news of this pay increase makes it to the Beehive.

The chair of the council can say all he likes about the chief executive being brilliant at her job and how she has a lot on her plate and how it’s her job to lead ECAN through change and all that, but what he is missing, and what every one of those councillors who voted for this unfathomable pay increase is missing, is that a pay increase of just under 10% is la-la land stuff. On several fronts.

The most obvious is what a $40,000 pay increase for the chief executive of a regional council looks like to the rest of us. Those of us who pay rates to ECAN.

The other reason why this move is so wrong right now is because it looks to me like ECAN is explicitly ignoring the noises coming from the Government about local councils needing to cut their cloth.

How can you have these kinds of expectations coming at you —as well as the likes of regional development minister Shane Jones declaring war on regional councils— yet still give your chief executive a huge pay increase?

It shows just how out of touch our regional councillors are. 

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