More than half of the names on the so-called Sunshine List for Brantford and Brant County belong to teachers.
For 2021, there are about 2,300 local names on the list of public sector employees earning annual salaries of $100,000 or more.
Of that number, 1,030 work for the Grand Erie District School Board, up from about 300 in 2020. Meantime, the number of Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board employees on the list rose to 442 last year from 428 the year before.
Provincially, publicly funded elementary and secondary school teachers earning $100,000 a year or more reached 65,581 in 2021, up by 35,606 from the previous year, according to an analysis obtained by Postmedia. Over 92 per cent of the growth in the annual Sunshine List was attributed to teachers entering the six-figure club.
Last year, in large part due to the racking up of overtime from increased workplace demands because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was nurses and hospital workers who saw their Sunshine List numbers swell. Before that, it was firefighters and, before them, police officers.
This time, it’s Ontario’s educators.
Locally, the education list was headed by JoAnna Roberto, Grand Erie’s director of education, who earned $208,477, while Michael McDonald, her counterpart at the Catholic board, earned $200,644.
The reporting threshold has remained unchanged since the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act became law in Ontario a quarter of a century ago. While there have been calls to raise the threshold or stop the disclosure altogether, no changes have been made as the cost of living rises steadily. The government says the act is designed to “ensure accountability to taxpayers.”
But, even when adjusted for inflation, the number of people on the list has quadrupled since it was first announced.
In 1995, Brantford-Brant had about a dozen names on the first list. When the threshold is raised to $167,000 to account for inflation, the local list for 2021 numbers 53.
As the list has grown, little has been done to make it more user-friendly.
It’s easy to look at the full list of salaries from the local school board, hospital or municipality. But staff at the W. Ross Macdonald School in Brantford or those at the Brant OPP are buried within thousands of other provincial government names with nothing to identify them as working locally.
According to the list, the top salary in the community last year went to David McNeil, president and CEO of the Brant Community Healthcare System, which operates Brantford General Hospital and the Willett in Paris. McNeil was paid $355,020 and $11,408 in taxable benefits.
He was joined by eight others from BCHS, who earned more than $170,000, including two vice-presidents and two nurses.
Meanwhile, the BCHS saw the number of names on its list drop to 170 last year from 222 in 2020.
Spokesperson Alena Lukich said that was partly due to an extra pay period in 2020.
“As compared to years prior to 2020, Brant Community Healthcare System continues to have a larger number of employees who earned a salary of over $100,000 due to an increased workload and responsibilities, and overtime emerging from COVID-19 pressures” said Lukich.
“We estimate that a total of 40 of our staff appear in this year’s list due to overtime hours.”
Here are some other local salaries from the list:
• At the Brant County Health Unit, Jo Ann Tober, the CEO, earned $288,641.
• The position of acting medical officer of health was shared in 2021 by doctors Elizabeth Urbantke, Malcolm Lock and Rebecca Comley. Urbantke, who left her position on April 30 after 16 months, was paid $103,379. Lock, who returned temporarily after retiring in 2019 after 16 years in the job, was paid $182,013. Comley, who took over Sept. 13, does not appear on the list.
• Two doctors from the Grand River Community Health Center in Brantford, who earned more than $250,000 each, as well as a doctor at the local aboriginal health centre, who was paid $177,118.
ª Donna Cripps, former CEO of the Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand, Brant Local Health Integrated Network, earned $300,063 and $6,938 in benefits.
• David Wormald, president of the St. Joseph’s Lifecare Center in Brantford and St Joseph’s Health Center in Guelph, earned $299,586 and $11,315.
• Among City of Brantford municipal employees, Police Chief Rob Davis was the top earner, taking home $239,664, plus $3,106 in taxable benefits. Next was city CAO Brian Hutchings, who was paid $236,195, plus $10,317 in taxable benefits, and Fire Chief Todd Binkley, who was paid $192,325, plus $8,698).
• Topping Brant County municipal employees was CAO Michael Bradley, who earned $198,017, plus $9,779 in benefits.
• Brantford Crown attorney Andrew Falls earned $259,345, with assistant Crown attorney paid between $106,000 to $229,381, depending on the number of hours worked.
• All area judges in the Ontario Court of Justice earned $335,883, plus $3,371 in taxable benefits.
• A justice of the peace earned $154,173.
• At the Brant OPP, three people shared the role of detachment commander during 2021. Shawn Nash, Angela Ferguson and Elizabeth Darling are each on the list for that role and others they played during the year.
• James Commerford, the president of the YMCA of Hamilton, Burlington and Brantford, earned $239,052.
For the full list of 244,390 names, go to www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-disclosure.
With files from Postmedia Network
@EXPSGamble