The case for higher politician pay

This is the second story in a four-part series on the pay of Fraser Valley politicians. Part 1: See every mayor and councillor’s pay | Part 2: The case for higher politician pay | Part 3: The leapfrog effect: how cities set their leaders’ wages | Part 4: See the expense tallies of every Fraser Valley mayor and councillor

Langley City’s mayor makes more than the leaders of Chilliwack and Abbotsford, despite presiding over a much-smaller community. But Nathan Pachal isn’t apologizing.

Pachal, 41, is the region’s youngest mayor, says the pay of politicians needs to be fair and decent to attract qualified candidates—especially those of prime working age. Indeed, he says that if Langley City’s mayoral salary was much lower, he probably wouldn’t have run to lead his community.

‘These roles right now … are full-time positions’

In 2007, Langley City’s mayor made $44,000 a year. That figure was about $3,000 higher than the median wage among full-time workers in BC. Six years of pay raises followed, bringing the mayoral salary to $78,345 by 2013. The acting mayor of the day said the raises had taken place at an unacceptable pace.

But in the decade since, pay for Langley City’s politicians has nearly doubled; Pachal now makes close to $140,000 a year—before factoring in additional compensation for regional district duties. The figure is now about double an average full-time worker’s salary in BC.

The salaries of Langley City’s politicians are set once a term and, like those in most other BC communities, are based on a survey of what mayors and councillors in select other communities are paid.

Langley City has a longstanding formula that pays its mayor a rate equal to the median salary of the mayors of the Metro Vancouver Regional District. Councillors then get 45% of that salary.

The formula not only skews Langley City’s pay higher than communities in the Fraser Valley, but it also ensures the municipalities leaders are compensated better than those in similarly sized cities and towns. That is because Langley City is not a “median” Metro Vancouver community. Instead, it is one of Metro Vancouver’s smaller municipalities. So Langley City’s policy means that its politicians are paid identical to that of the City of North Vancouver, a municipality with twice as many people. (That city pegs its politicians’ pay increases to those of its staff and inflation.)

By tying pay to other Metro Vancouver communities, Langley City ends up paying its politicians better than Fraser Valley communities to the east. (The higher pay for Langley City’s politicians compared to those in the Fraser Valley can be justified by pointing to home prices, which are significantly above those in Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack. At the same time, the cost of housing in Langley City is much lower than most of the rest of Metro Vancouver.)

Pachal, however, says it’s a good thing that Langley City pays its politicians comparably well and that doing so increases the chance that a community’s leaders represent the diversity of their constituents.

“We look at our politicians, and we're like, ‘Oh, my goodness, why don't politicians reflect the diversity of the communities they represent? Why aren't there younger people and politics especially at the local level?’” he said. “The traditional pay for a mayor or councillor might have made sense in the 1970s when the world was a simpler place, but quite frankly, these roles right now, especially for the mayor, are full-time positions.”

Pachal said the pay for politicians is needed, in part because of the increasing competition for skilled and knowledge-based workers in today’s economy.

“If you look at someone like myself, I am in the prime age for being in a full-time career in the private sector,” he said. Decent wages can help convince qualified and experienced workers to take a stab at local politics and public service, Pachal said.

“Traditionally we sort of thought, if you’re a retiree or you’re independently wealthy, get into politics. But for the rest of the folks there was really none of that opportunity.”

Instead of regretting his own pay, he says other municipalities should consider the benefits of healthier paid politicos.

“If you look at our council, as an example, there are three of us on the council that I would say are younger, and I think that’s a really good thing and probably a little bit different than a lot of the other councils in the region. And that’s because we’re paying a salary that is matched to the expectation of the job.”

(Is Pachal’s analysis correct? Langley City has three people who are of “millenial” age or younger. Pachal himself has just entered his 40s. Among the Fraser Valley’s lower-paying councils, Mission has two councillors aged 45 or younger—including Jag Gill, one of the youngest councillors in the Lower Mainland; Abbotsford and Chilliwack each have two millennials. Although none are mayors, Chilliwack’s Jason Lum serves as the chair of the Fraser Valley Regional District in a role similar to that of a mayor and with pay to match.)

Many knowledge-based jobs come with unique perks and intangible rewards. Many are attractive enough that they also come with what has been called a “passion tax:” a lower salary that workers are willing to take in exchange for work they find enjoyable and fulfilling.

Pachal said that holds true for mayors. But he said the size of that tax matters, and that Langley City’s comparably decent pay played a key role in his decision to campaign for the mayor’s chair.

“The mayor’s salary is a good amount of money,” he said. But Pachal noted that workers in the tech sector, in which he was employed prior to becoming mayor, make far more. “My skillset in the private sector would make more than [the mayoral salary] by $30[,000] or $40,000 extra a year. There is a passion tax that I’m paying and it’s one I’m happy to do, otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing it. But $95,000 [referring to the wage of the mayor of Mission] wouldn’t work. There’s a reason why there are not a lot of younger people in this position.”

Pachal said a fixation on high-paid politicians is a distraction and in opposition to broad-based efforts to see people—even politicians—paid appropriately for the hard work they do. He pointed out that as a proportion of a city’s budget, the money spent on politician salaries amounts to a rounding error.

“I'd rather work on the things where we're lifting people up… instead of just trying to drive down the price of everything and drive it down by salary. I’m just fully opposed to that as a principle.”

At the same time, the pay for Langley City’s mayor’s chair keeps on rising at rates that exceed those of a normal worker. So where does it stop?

“This is a number I would never, ever support, but if Langley City was like ‘We’re going to pay the mayor $200,000 a year,’ gee, that’s going to red flag it,” he said. “We’re always accountable at the end of the day and that’s what keeps it under control.”

The leapfrog effect

Still, the question lingers: do the methods Langley City and other municipalities use to set the wages of politicians make any logical sense?

Langley City bases its politicians’ pay on the median of a group of communities that are, for the most part, mostly more populous. But Pachal notes that although being a North Vancouver mayor might put you in charge of more people, the fundamentals of the job are almost identical.

Most BC cities base their politicians’ pay on those in other communities of similar size, which implies that a city’s population is connected to the value of their mayor and council’s work. And all pay policies that tie one municipalities’ wages directly to those in other cities and towns are susceptible to creating a game of politician-pay leapfrog, where mayors and councillors tend to always come out ahead.

Tomorrow, we’ll consider how politician pay is set up, and how some local communities have suggested alternatives.

This is the second story in a four-part series on the pay of Fraser Valley politicians. Part 1: See every mayor and councillor’s pay | Part 2: The case for higher politician pay | Part 3: The leapfrog effect: how cities set their leaders’ wages | Part 4: See the expense tallies of every Fraser Valley mayor and councillor