No MLAs involved in MLA pension review
Posted Mar 24, 2011 05:28:53 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Politicians won’t be the ones reviewing their own pensions after all.
The speaker of the Nova Scotia legislature says he’ll have a judge pick the review panel.
Speaker Gordie Gosse called a meeting of the house leaders from the Tories, Liberals and governing NDP on Wednesday and they all agreed that MLAs will have no part in choosing the panel or setting the terms of reference for the panel.
Gosse says he has a list of three retired judges and he is in the process of contacting them to see who is available to head the panel.
That person will then select two citizens to round out the three-person panel.
“I’m hoping to have them up and running as soon as I can get the judge person in place, get him to pick them so I can get it up and running as soon as possible,” he said. “I would give them a maximum six-month time period, because that’s the same time period it took New Brunswick to get theirs done.”
Kevin Lacey of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says he’s glad to see politicians off the panel, but he’s not convinced that the right decisions will be made.
“This shouldn’t give Nova Scotians a lot of faith, knowing that the politicians got together in secret to make this deal,” he said. “I hope that of the people they select to sit on the committee, we pick some people who come from areas of outside, that traditionally don’t sit on these kinds of things, rather than just university professors and accountants and that kind of thing.”
MLAs will still have the final say after the review on whether the recommendations are adopted.
The current pension plan, which has been described as one of the most generous in the country, has been under scrutiny since the Taxpayers Federation released figures suggesting that for every dollar paid in by an MLA, taxpayers contribute nearly seven.
