Poverty Reduction Strategy (II)

In May 2007, the issue of the Amazing Inflating Premier’s Office Budget hit the floor of the House of Assembly:
http://www.assembly.nl.ca/business/hansard/ga45session4/07-05-01.htm

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, here are a couple of examples of the salaries and the positions in the Premier’s office. Upstairs we have an individual by the name of Brian Crawley, Chief of Staff. He will make $131,000 this year, a raise of 8.1 per cent. Elizabeth Matthews, Director of Communications, will make $102,000 this year, an increase of 13.8 per cent. The Director of Operations will make $82,000, an increase of 16.8 per cent.

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, let the record show, and the people who might be watching this know, that when questions come from the Opposition they are supposed to be directed to the minister of the department responsible, or the Premier, if he is in his seat, or the Deputy Premier, in my case, or the Government House Leader, not to a minister who has no responsibility for that particular department, Mr. Speaker.

Everybody knows that. The Leader of the Opposition knows it, but he is trying to be cute, Mr. Speaker. He is trying to be just as cute as he is listing out those salaries that he just listed. He did not say, Mr. Speaker, for example, that Elizabeth Matthews, the Director of Communications in the Premier’s office, with her reclassification and her salary increase, will still make less money than was paid to the incumbent who worked for Premier Grimes when he was there, $103,000.

Alrighty. In 2007, Ms. Matthews received a raise of 13.8%, presumably over her 2006 figure. That would have put here 2006 salary somewhere in the neighbourhood of $89,600.

And, according to Monday’s Tellytorial, the good DComm has, for 2010, received a further pay hike of $7,854, bringing her total package for 2010 to $126,868.

That is an increase of about $37,000 in four years.

For a little perspective, according to the 2006 census, there were 294,275 people in Newfoundland and Labrador whose total income in 2005 was less than $35,000. There were another 20,605 whose total income was between $35,000 and $39,999.

A total of 397,675 people had income, from any source, in 2005.

In other words, Ms. Matthews’ cumulative raise since 2006 is roughly as large or larger than the entire annual income of three-quarters of Dear Leader’s income-earning subjects at the time her salary started to inflate.