Part One of a Conversation With Dominique O'Rourke: Are Council Members Paid Enough?

With a municipal election on the horizon, I thought I'd put some effort into trying to bring out some of the complexities involved with being a Council member. Partially this will be about the business of Council, but I also want to discuss some of the political questions too. 

Ward Six Councilor, Dominique O'Rourke. Image c/o FaceBook, cropped by Bill Hulet.

To that end, I asked Ward Six representative Dominique O'Rourke if she'd be interested in taking part in a long conversation. I was glad she agreed for two reasons. First of all, she is a very articulate person with a lot of experience in previous jobs as a public relations expert and lobbyist in both Ottawa and Queen's Park. Secondly, as will become obvious in some of our later conversations, she and I don't really see the world in exactly the same way---yet I think we were still able to have a useful conversation. I'm not one of those people who believes that journalism needs to always show "both sides", but I do think that if people never engage with folks we may disagree with we run the risk of ending up with a society where the citizenry lives in their own distinct solitudes. And this is a very bad thing.

I consider this an important point that needs to be emphasized. People who talk about 'democracy' often tend to fixate upon the mechanics of voting, decision-making, constitutions, etc. But in doing so, I think they are missing the essence. Democracy is a cultural artifact much more than it is a specific organization that delineates things like the Electorate, Executive, Legislature, and, Judiciary.

That's because when we get right down to it, there are always individuals in a flow chart, and they always have the option of ignoring convention or even the law. We can certainly see this now in the USA. People generally believe that the people who lose elections need to leave office---but it only happens if the people managing the turnover of power agree that it should. "Settled legal precedent" only means something until a majority of Judges in the Supreme Court decide it no longer does. And in Congress the majority rules---but only if the people administering the voting system decide to not allow Gerrymandering and there's no arcane rule like the fillibuster that allows a minority veto over popular legislation.

Even Canada has suffered from this problem. One example that comes to my mind was in 2010 when the Governor General allowed the prorogation of Parliament when the Conservatives only had a minority of the seats and the Liberals had arranged enough support from the other parties to form a government. In effect, a political leader who wasn't the real Prime Minister (because he had yet to get the support of the majority of sitting members) was allowed to deny someone who did have majority support from assuming the position. This was something that went totally against all Parliamentary precedent and undermined Canada's unwritten constitution. The theoretical job of the Governor General was to protect this constitution, yet Michelle Jean crumpled under pressure.

So contrary to what your high school civics teacher may have told you (do they still teach civics?), the safeguard of democracy is really something much more intangible than either law or institutional tradition. It is transparency that allows voters to know what is really going on. It is the free flow of opinions that allows folks to learn to see the world a new way. It is the public square that allows folks who may understand things very differently from one another the ability to talk to one another. And it also includes the integrity of people in key positions who are willing to 'do the right thing' when 'push comes to shove'. Insofar as these things disappear, we cease to be citizens and become just atomized individuals. And at that point---no matter how things appear on paper---democracy becomes not much more than an empty husk. 

So I start out with a big thank you to Councilor O'Rourke for agreeing to become part of this conversation. By engaging with me, I believe she has done her bit to strengthen democracy in Guelph.

&&&&     

I started off with a "softball" question because it was about something I suspected we agree---namely that Council members get paid too little money.

Cloudwalking Owl · Are Councilors Paid Enough? Part One

Council members in Guelph currently get paid about $47,500/year and the Mayor makes $152,500. Seeing this, the obvious first question to ask is How does this compare to other cities?

Luckily, I was able to find a 2018 report by the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario (AMCTO) that compares compensation of elected municipal officials across the province. First, here's an average of compensation ranked by population.

As you can see, Guelph Councilors make a little more than the average from other comparable cities (at least four years ago).

Now lets look at the break-down by cohort.

Again, looking at this chart, it would appear that Guelph Council is in the top 25% of income earners for cities of populations between 100,000 and 250,000. (Incidentally, the Mayor is in the top 18% also.) The point, of course, isn't how Guelph wages compare to other cities, but rather how they compare to comparable jobs in the broader economy. And I think it's accurate to say that for the amount of work a conscientious Council member should do, it's nowhere near what someone might expect for a similar position in either the private or non-profit sector.

&&&&

Wages are a funny thing, though. Ordinary people often find themselves using the word "fair", but I suspect if you talked to the average economist (or business tycoon) they'd suggest that we throw that concept out the window and instead rely upon "what THE MARKET will bear" to decide upon how much a person makes. I suppose the best illustration of this is the following map that I've often seen used as a meme on social media.      

This graphic has been repeated so many times I don't know which was the original.

The earliest citation of the above map I could find was 2013, but it still works for the point I am trying to make. In the USA sports teams---football and basketball---are tremendously important fundraising vehicles for universities. The assumption is that a coach can make or break a team, and since the teams are essential to the fiscal health of many American universities, competition to find the very best ones is often fiercer than to find great academics. And that's why the highest wages at universities often go to athletic directors instead of researchers. (Canadian universities have a very different funding model---so none of the above applies.)    

The dissonance between professor pay and coach pay in the USA is jarring, but in both the USA and Canada there is also a big distinction in payment between contract lecturers who just teach undergraduate courses and professors who also teach graduate students, sit on committees, and, do research. There are complexities to the issue that are beyond the scope of this article, but the best way to understand it is that professors at a university are expected only teach a few courses (three or four) a year. In contrast, sessional lecturers, are expected to teach three or four times as many courses in a year if they expect to make an income of something like $90,000/year. (According to Glassdoor the average annual salary for a professor in Ontario is a bit under $120,000 a year. Please remember that this is an average, not a median. I couldn't find a number for the median, and I strongly suspect that a small percentage of very well-paid 'stars' are pulling up the average.)

This is the theory. However, there are inducements baked into this system that lead to ridiculous outcomes. Even though universities often theoretically limit the number of courses a contract lecturer can teach in a semester, there can be strong inducements that push some people into teaching many more. For example, one anonymous source told me about his school theoretically limiting the number courses per semester to five, but instead people sometimes teach as many as twelve. I'm told that this crazy-ass, way-too-high workload doesn't seem to be about greed so much as fear of losing-out on future contracts, as anyone who takes a break from teaching a particular course often loses the right of first refusal to teach it the next time it's offered. (Ie: don't teach it this semester and you may never be able to teach it again.)

Again, we've left the realm of fair and are back into the world of being paid what the market decides is right. And in this case, the market has decided that getting the very best researchers is much more important than doing the very best job teaching undergraduates. And, I suspect, this is exactly the same reason why football coaches are paid more than professors in the USA. It's because a very good researcher can make a university a lot of money by bringing in research contracts from both government and corporations. 

Besides the impact of an impossible-to-sustain workload on lecturers, it is obvious that undergraduates are suffering from this system. As an undergraduate I had access to teachers that I would assume modern students could only dream of. But isn't this decline in the quality of teaching a 'market failure'---doesn't orthodox economics tell us that it will eventually self-correct?

The problem comes down supply and demand, but in a special sense. The problem is that some demand (ie: better research) is concentrated into a small number of powerful people whereas others are diffused into the hands of a large number of powerless people (ie: good undergraduate teaching). 

There are a lot of people who are qualified and would like to teach at a university. Moreover, undergraduates mostly haven't got a clue about the difference between a good course where the instructor has enough time to prepare and interact with students, and, a poor one where the sessional has to wear roller skates just to provide the bare minimum. More importantly, they really don't have much say in who gets to teach them once they've committed to a school. In contrast, there is only a small pool of corporate or government donors, who know exactly what they want, and, have ultimate control over who they do or do not support. This means that universities have a huge market incentive to cut costs on teaching and invest in research. The result is a small pool of highly-paid prestige researchers---and a faceless herd of poorly-paid, "disposable", contract lecturers who can only make a 'decent' living by putting in long, long hours.

&&&&

So what has this got to do with the salaries of City Council? I used the two examples from university to illustrate a much larger trend in society. Lots and lots of people get paid very poorly for jobs that are very important. We really noticed this in the pandemic when lots of folks who get paid not very much money were expected to risk getting a scary disease---the folks who work in extended care facilities, for example. We live in a capitalist society, and the religion of Adam Smith proclaims that we must allow the All-Mighty Invisible Hand free reign to allocate money without reference to the petty concerns of ordinary human beings. 

For those who worship at the altar of capitalism, the low wages for Council members makes sense. In every election there are always more people who want to get elected than there are slots to fill. And during elections prospective employees (candidates) never discuss wages with their potential future bosses (voters). 

&&&&

For reasons that I will get into in future posts, I'm experimenting with migrating from Blogger to Substack, and changing the name of this journal from The Guelph-Back-Grounder to Hulet's Backgrounder. I'm going to be publishing on both media for a while yet, but starting now I'm going to be sending out my alerts using a Substack link instead of a Blogger one. It's very easy to subscribe to Substack, and it's a lot less 'noisy' for readers. I think it's an improvement, but if there are issues, I'd really like to hear from you so I can fix them as they arise. 

Back to Council pay.  

&&&&

Cloudwalking Owl · Are Councillers Paid Enough Part Two

The complexity comes from the fact that the city isn't a business and Council isn't a board of directors. In fact, you could say that (contrary to the people who maintain that government should be 'run like a business') neither one should be seen as being part of the capitalist economy at all. Indeed, I'd suggest that they are functionally in opposition to the so-called 'Free Market'.

The oft-repeated observation is that we live in a society that follows The Golden Rule, which is defined as 'whomever has the most gold makes all the rules'. Indeed, that's exactly what capitalism is---rule by the class of people who own the most capital. But we aren't living in a pure capitalist society, instead the free market is supposed to be hemmed-in and controlled by democratically-decided rules that mitigate the worst excesses of the business class. 

Moreover, Guelph Council is supposed to be a representative democracy, which means that we are supposed to elect people who represent the interests and values of the majority of the citizenry. And that's where things get sticky. 

It's important for an elected official to be effective. That is to say, they need to be someone who is able to grasp the essentials of municipal governance so they can avoid becoming totally at the mercy of staff and lobbyists. That's what I think Dominique is emphasizing in our conversation. But at the same time, a Council member also needs to be a good representative of the citizens. And by that, I mean they have to be someone who can understand the needs of all the people. That's to say, the politician shouldn't be just a technocrat who understands how the system operates---she also needs to have a very visceral grasp of how the system impacts the lives of people.

Let's add one more complexity to the pot. 

Elected officials don't just have a responsibility to the people that elected them. They also have a responsibility to folks who not only didn't elect them, but couldn't elect them. One of the problems we have in dealing with the Climate Emergency is that the people who are being asked to make changes in their lives are not the same people who will be most affected by their decision to either deal with or ignore the causes of climate change. The young and unborn will bear the brunt, yet they don't have a say. It's the same thing with the housing emergency. People who already live in a ward get to elect the Council member, yet the people most affected by the decisions she makes are the ones who don't already have a place to live. This means that to be a good Councilor, someone sometimes has to be willing to judge issues on their own merits instead of following the opinions and interests of the people who voted them into office.

The housing emergency is not just about housing, it's about everything in a person's life. If someone has such an onerous rent or mortgage that they have zero 'wiggle room' in their finances, this means that they will not be able to save money for their retirement. (House ownership isn't really a good way to save money because as long as you live you will still need to own a home. And the price you pay for the home you live in when old will up in go-up in lockstep with the home you are living in now.) It will also mean that they will have dramatically-limited life options---they may have to work at several jobs, commute long distances, post-pone or avoid having children, not be able to upgrade their skills, not be able to take risks (like starting their own business), etc. Excessive housing costs are like a giant lamprey eel that sucks the blood out of anyone who has to pay them. They destroy lives and also communities. 

Another insidious thing about excessive housing costs is that they are often invisible to anyone who isn't personally suffering. Indeed, most homeowners I meet seem to see them as nothing but a benefit when the value of their home goes up in price. (In contrast, when I hear people bragging about how much their house has gone up in value, I tend to feel it as a kick in the gut because I immediately think about how this is going to affect anyone who doesn't already own a home. I also feel the same way when people brag about their vacation trips because all I can think about is the carbon emitted by the jet flights.) When your house goes up in value, folks often become mesmerized by the dollar amounts---totally oblivious to the truth that the increase is price is life-blood stolen from other people. If we understand this, perhaps it is a good idea that Council members should be sweating over things like mortgage payments and how they are going to send their children to school. Would it perhaps it would be a good idea to pay Council members such that they have to live on the median income of the city's people?

A quick Google search led me to the City of Guelph website which said that the median household income in Guelph is a little under $78,000/household. Since O'Rourke is already making $47,500 from her Council position, if we assume that her significant other is doing at least as well, the household already looks like it is doing better than more than half of the population.

&&&&

Since I'm already talking about the taboo subject of salary, if people can afford it, I'd like readers to think about taking a subscription through Patreon or leaving a tip with PayPal . (It's also possible to subscribe through PayPal). I put a lot of work into these stories, and right now I'm receiving a grand total of $73.50/month for them (plus the odd tip, which is always appreciated and is sometimes quite substantial). I know that there are a lot of people who are much worse off than me so I'm never going to move behind a pay wall, but I also know that there are also a lot of folks who are doing much better. I get about 1500 hits a month and have so for years, so I know that there are readers. If you think what I do is worth reading, maybe it's worth supporting too---.   

&&&&

Conversations about how much a person makes are generally considered 'in bad taste'. That's because it often runs the risk of devolving into envy. (That's probably what was fueling the anecdote I mentioned about a co-worker and what the Mayor used to be paid.) But there is another side to this that is also important. 

Groups of people who make similar amounts of money have a tendency to see some aspects of the world the same way. The important things are the economic drivers. For example, people who inherit a lot of money tend to take a dim view of inheritance taxes. 

In the case of the middle-class, people's two biggest capital assets tend to be their homes and education. I noticed this years ago when it became clear to me that the two things almost guaranteed to drive even the most left-wing liberals into becoming reactionaries were a perceived threat to the value of their house or the quality of their children's education. 

Poor people are different. The most important capital asset that they usually have are their family and friends. The importance comes from the fact that they are an important safety net during hard times. As my significant other says "a friend is someone who will allow you to sleep on their couch if your home burns down". 

These two worldviews are behind what each group fears when housing changes. Middle-class folks are terrified by the thought of intensification, because they fear it will lead to lowered property values. The poor are terrified by gentrification partly because it may price them out of the neighbourhood but also because the fear it will break up the community network they rely upon to navigate the particularly rough patches they expect to come along.

&&&& 

I raise the issue about how one's life experience impacts their understanding of housing crisis more to explain than to prescribe. As O'Rourke points out, keeping the pay low is not going to guarantee that only poor people will run for office. Indeed, it may discourage many folks who've managed to claw their way out of poverty from taking the plunge. And the very well-off will have no problem at all taking on the job as a hobby. 

As a general rule I tend to follow the idea that if you seek equality you should pull low people up rather than try to push high people down. Starvation doesn't justify malnutrition. And just because there are people who are being pushed into dire poverty by low wages doesn't justify exploiting hard-working professionals by paying them far less than they could make in the private sector. 

Personal history doesn't really define a person anyway. History is filled with individuals who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths yet who did an enormous amount of good for poor folks (FDR?). There are also lots of examples of people had lived in extreme poverty but who's reign was a catastrophe for the underprivileged (Adolph Hitler?). Education, values and personality matter just as much as work and life experience.

&&&&

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!