There's an almost $13 000 difference between the highest paid regional councillors and the lowest. Photo/File
There's an almost $13 000 difference between the highest paid regional councillors and the lowest. Photo/File
There were fiery scenes in Hawke's Bay's Regional council chambers on Wednesday, with councillor Debbie Hewitt claiming the wage difference between councillors was "discrimination".
"Just for the record, it's outright discrimination, and I think it should be addressed," Hewitt said.
For 2018/2019, the difference between the highest paid councillors and the lowest is almost $13,000.
In 2017/2018 the disparity between councillor pay was just over $12,500.
"There's an increasingly disproportionate balance between the base salaries paid to councillors and the councillors who have additional duties."
Council chairman Rex Graham disagreed and said higher pay was given for duties requiring extra work.
"The chairs and the committees are required to do a whole lot of extra work, and they do a whole lot of extra work and they get remunerated for that," Graham said.
Debbie Hewitt. Photo / File
Hewitt said chairing committees was not worth $13,000 extra, with the job essentially requiring the chair to arrange a couple of meetings a year.
"All of the councillors do turn up to the meetings though."
Councillor Tom Belford said he thought the process was fair, and thought his workload warranted extra pay.
"I would say it's a significantly greater amount of time put into the job than the person who was objecting. So I have no problem with the fact that there would be differential compensation."
Former chairman and current councillor Fenton Wilson, said he was happy with the current situation, but it was going to become a problem if the disparity continued to grow.
"If it carries on, getting a bigger and bigger gap, it does become challenging for future councils."
He said while he was chairman the pay difference between chairs of committees and regular councillors was about $4000 to $5000.
"For whatever reason the remuneration authority has changed the differential, which has resulted in this disparity."
Councillors receive a base salary set by the Remuneration Authority, with additional duties, for example chairing committees, being paid from a pool of funds.
The pool is set by the authority, but allocations from it are decided by the council.
The pool is double the base salary of a single councillor, which means as the base salary increases, the pool increases exponentially, creating a larger difference between wages over time.
Graham's overall salary is increasing by 6.8 per cent, however this is due to a change in the remuneration authority's vehicle usage policy. His take home salary is increasing by 3.7per cent.
