Public service salaries and Peter Kormos

Ontario's staff salaries expand; Peter Kormos was a figure of consequence in the Legislature.

from Inside Queen's Park Volume 26, Number 07

IQP has been pointing out for several years that the public sector salary disclosure scheme is most illuminating when analysis focuses on the changing compensation patterns of the nine different sectors within the reporting regime formula — rather than picking and choosing among the bulging individual pay-packets received by CEOs and other key managers as well as by the cops, jail guards and other public sector workers who sign up to work as much overtime as they possibly can get.

The overall growth of the Public Service Salary Disclosure Act (PSSDA) universe is certainly important and interesting.  Ontario started out with 4,497 reported disclosures in 1996 and by 2012 that total had ballooned to 88,406 – for a staggering 19-fold increase.  The total compensation paid to disclosed public servants increased correspondingly, from $555.2M to $11.352B.  That is, the best-paid 4,497 of Ontario’s public sector employees received over half-a-billion dollars in 199,6 whereas their 88,406 taxation year 2012 counterparts were paid more than eleven billion dollars – which is to say close to the amount of the current provincial deficit. 

The media are increasingly critical of the fact that the PSSDA filings have hugely inflated the number of public servants earning over the $100,000 threshold – simply because the  disclosure scheme does not adjust higher money salaries so as to reflect their reduced real purchasing power.  If the 88,406 taxation year 2012 filings were CPI-adjusted, there would be only 19,760 (22.3 percent) below $100,000 compared to 68,646 (77.6 percent) above that threshold.

Premier Wynne blithely applauds the increased number of disclosed salaries because she generally welcomes the healing balm of transparency.  That is not only an authentically liberal stance but it is also a fairly convenient default position for a very new government with a long line of undecided issues.

The PSSDA regime was initiated when Ernie Eves was Ontario’s Treasurer, but from the standpoint of political responsibility it is much simpler to focus on the ten years beginning in 2003, which matches the life of the McGuinty government.

The total number of disclosed employees has grown steadily.  Starting out fractionally below 5,000 in 1996, it climbed above 20,000 in 2003, doubled the total to over 42,000 in 2007, and then more than doubled it again, to 88,000 by 2012.  The healing balm of transparency, referred to above, unquestionably reveals the scale of the problem but on the record to date, it does not prompt the necessary curative action.       

The policy options available to a government forced to embrace austerity are mostly unappetizing, and as Don Drummond asserted in his report and still contends, wage freezes and other restraint measures do not deliver effective long-term spending control.

One challenge arises in managing the size of the "$100,000 Club" membership in the PSSDA sectors which are most directly controlled by the government: Crown Agencies, the Ontario Public Service and Other Public Sector. 

The number of employees subject to PSSDA disclosure changes over time.  In 2003, Crown Agencies disclosed 1,276; the Ontario Public Service, 2,886; and Other Public Sector, 419; for a three-sector total of 4,581 or 22.4 percent of the PSSDA total for that tax year.

In 2012, the number disclosed in Crown Agencies was 3,185; that for the OPS was 11,223; and the number in Other Public Service was 3,516; for a three-sector total of 14,827 or 16.8 percent of the PSSDA total for that tax year.

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A tale of two lively mavericks: Peter Kormos and Morty Shulman

It strikes this writer as an interesting coincidence that he bought Morton Shulman’s slight 1979 memoir, Member of the Legislature, in an Easter weekend visit to a Kent county antique store on the very day we learned of the sudden death from natural causes at a sadly early age of Peter Kormos, the most formidable former maverick to sit at Queen‘s Park in this era.

Shulman ran for the NDP in 1967 and sat with his caucus-mates until giving up on the political game two elections later.  But he had become a socialist to unleash a stream of media savvy attacks on the PCs  in revenge for firing him as Toronto’s Chief Coroner. 

The west Toronto MD and unrepentant capitalist player of the stock market had no roots in and scant affinity for the NDP he’d joined.  And Shulman’s publicity-hound antics came to exasperate the NDP almost as much as the PCs and Liberals.  Shulman balked at running again in 1975 because party leader Stephen Lewis dismissed his characteristically high-handed demand to be appointed Attorney General if the NDP won the election.

Peter Kormos never passed as a socialist. He was the real thing. A criminal lawyer practicing in Welland, Kormos was a loyal lieutenant of veteran MPP Mel Swart, and he won the nomination and by-election when Swart stood down.  Continuing the celebration of left-wing principle in the NDP’s Niagara bastion, Kormos led the charge on public automobile insurance, and was dropped from the Bob Rae cabinet after this keynote policy was renounced.  Kormos was to take his revenge by unleashing a leadership run aimed at preventing Frances Lankin from succeeding Rae and ensuring instead that the party would be headed by Howie Hampton, husband of his pal Shelley Martel.

Although initially overshadowed by his mentor Kormos established himself very strongly over time, sitting as an MPP for 23 years compared to Swart’s 13. A recognized authority on the Legislature Standing Orders and Hampton’s house leader, Kormos was a figure of consequence.  He could be considered charismatic but his sheer force of character is what came through when he stood to speak. 
 
What a memoir he could have produced if he had acceded to IQP’s appeal to sit right down and write himself what would have been a hell of a letter!  Kormos did this newsletter the great honour of reading out at the February 2007 memorial service for Swart the concluding lines of our appreciation of that stubborn politician’s mixture of principle and pugnacity:  “Watch out, God; Mel will be holding you to account right after St Peter waves him through the pearly gates”.

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