Still mayor and still just a part-time leader

On May 28, 2011 Glenn Taylor was elected as leader of the Alberta Party. Glenn Taylor is also the Mayor of Hinton. I discussed this conflict at length in a previous post, which I wrote on May 31st. Some said I jumped on him too soon; that I should have give him some time; that he would step down as mayor in due course, etc, etc.

On September 27 via Twitter, I asked Glenn this: "When will you be transitioning from your Hinton Mayoralty position?" I figured four months was plenty of time for him to have stepped down.

This was his response:

I'm still working on that. My wife and I, my council and I are discussing.

On October 1st I suggested he should blog about his transition; he replied with “OK".

Four months and counting on what should have been a “no brainer” decision. I think it’s clear the party doesn’t have the funds to pay him a salary. It’s also clear they are very happy with having a part-time leader.

To me this boils down to a matter of ethics. It shouldn't take someone four months to decide what is the right thing to do in this situation. In fact it should have been something he gave a lot of thought to BEFORE he ran for leader.

OR perhaps it's a case of the party not being honest with the leadership candidates. Were they advised that there would be no salary? That it was to be a completely unpaid, part-time volunteer position?

Let’s not forget he has the bulk of the Hinton town council sitting on his local Alberta Party constituency board. It makes one wonder exactly how much “party” work they are doing while they are being paid by the municipality.


BTW Glenn, that's a pretty sweet car. I had looked at the Crossfire, but damn they were pricey.

Editted to add:

Just had a bizarre conversation with this Alberta Party supporter. Best quote from her:

everyone relies on taxpayers (duh) but if u reference some rule I hv no idea about - I hv no idea. Ideas r what counts.

You can read the entire string here.

Hinton Mayor Goes to Edmonton

I had promised in the comments of my last posting that I would respond to some questions and comments. I had this lonnnggg post all planned where I was going to give several scenarios about holding two positions (at least one being an elected one) and the ramifications from that. It’s long overdue, ironically due to my working two jobs; a paying one and a volunteer role managing my husband’s campaign.

So this will be shorter than I initially planned and limited to responding to my good friend Rhys; who left these questions:

When does it become unethical to be a party's representative\candidate and a municipal politician at the same time?

Or is that just if you're a party's leader -- not a lowly candidate in a riding, say?

Rhys hits on a key distinction relevant to the Glenn Taylor situation. He has been “elected” to two positions. If he had been a part-time plumber and elected leader of the Alberta Party, likely no one would have cared other than maybe his plumbing customers. As it is he is paid by the taxpayers of Hinton. Will they know or care if his attention is elsewhere? Are they okay with paying him when he might actually be doing work the Party at the time?

More to Rhys’ point though; he is asking at what level of candidacy and at what point does it become unethical. I’ve done some digging and there are indeed a few people who sit on town councils and have been elected as candidates for provincial political parties.

I think we need to examine what the expectations are for those candidates to fulfill their roles. Some may not anticipate doing anything until an election is actually called. Others may do some campaigning on evenings and weekends. If it is the latter; I think they would have to be very cautious of making a crystal clear distinction between their elected duties and their candidacy efforts. For example; if they attend a meeting as a councilor and are selling memberships to their respective party… then yes, that’s out of bounds in my opinion.

To be very open about this, past Alberta Party leaders have held or kept their other jobs and its never been an issue. Partly because their jobs weren’t elected positions. But more importantly there were none of the huge expectations of the current incarnation of the party.

I think Glenn Taylor’s situation boils down to two things:

- What are the expectations of the Alberta Party members
- Can he maintain a crystal clear distinction between his two roles

If the members are happy with a part-time leader then so be it. If they had expected a leader who can do the summer BBQ circuit, fundraising, attend CA formation meetings, attend caucus meetings and much, much more… well then they will be very disappointed.

As fate would have it; Glenn Taylor today provided us with an example of how his two roles conflict.

This picture was posted on Twitter today along with this comment.

@NDPview: #abparty ldr Taylor uses Town of Hinton vehicle to visit MLA Taylor at #ableg all afternoon. Naughty ldr.

Apparently Glenn Taylor went to the Alberta Legislature today to meet with Dave Taylor. It seems quite obvious he drove a vehicle belonging to the town of Hinton. Now is this a vehicle for his own personal use? Is it shared with other members of council?

Hmmm and there "all afternoon"? I wonder who is going to pick up the cost of the parking ticket?

Seems Mr. Taylor is creating more questions than he is answering.

Glenn Taylor: Mayor or Party Leader Can He Be Both???

Well Monday morning has come and gone. Glenn Taylor, new leader of the Alberta Party has not stepped down as Mayor of Hinton. I listened to him on Rob Breakenridge last night on QR77 last night and Glenn has made it clear he will be staying on as Mayor at least for now.

To me it is pretty straight forward that someone who has been elected as the leader of a party; should not also hold another elected, non-partisan position that is paid for by the taxpayers. Glenn justifies it by saying his role a Mayor is “part-time” and that realistically at this point the role of leader is also “part-time”.

Here is a quote from the interview where Rob asks Glenn about stepping down:

Well, I haven’t resigned from it yet and there’s discussion to come with my council and my community about what the transition plan will look like. Course most mayors in Alberta, the smaller municipal level are expected to have to have part-time jobs. And the mayor’s roles are usually based on the meetings you attend and a small honorarium for the work that you do in between. So really they expect you to have a part-time job. And I guess when you really look at it, the Alberta Party at this point as we are building, is still a part-time job. But there is a transition plan that needs to be built and I will do that with my council and my community.

I’m not sure what this “transition” plan is all about. We have Municipal Acts and Election Acts in Alberta that cover what happens when a Mayor steps down. I’m fairly confident his council will support whatever Glenn and the Alberta Party want to do. After all every one of them is an Alberta Party member; the deputy mayor is even on the local Constituency Association for the Alberta Party. This information was obtained from Glenn’s own website. Here is a screenshot of it. (Click on image to enlarge)

I’m very interested in Glenn’s definition of “part-time” and of “small honorarium”. To me part-time is roughly 50% of normally work week, so 20 hours. Anything less than that, one would be inclined to say “very part-time”. And a small honorarium to me sounds like a token amount; an amount that likely someone wouldn’t be able to support themselves on, especially since Glenn adds that they “expect you to have other part-time work.”

I’ve searched Hinton’s website and was unable to find any reference to the total time commitment for council. There indeed are two regularly scheduled council meetings and two standing committee meetings each month. And with the “work in between” as Glenn described, I think it’s very likely the Mayors job could only take 20 hours a week.

What I did find this though, the 2010 audited financial statements for the town of Hinton. If you go to page #21 you will find this.

As you can see the salary includes honoraria, however it also includes base pay, bonuses, overtime, lump sum payments and any other direct cash remuneration. In Glenn’s case it totaled $46,533.00 last year; not including benefits. That works out to nearly $45.00 per hour, not bad for a part-time job.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying he’s not worth it or that we shouldn’t pay elected officials fairly. But I do have an issue with them presenting it to the public as a “small” amount. There are many working families out there struggling to make that type of income. To have an elected official brush it off as a “small amount, requiring a second part-time job” is insulting.

You can listen to the entire interview in the QR77 audio vault.
May 30, 2011
9:00 PM

Link to Hinton's 2010 Financial Statements


UPDATE:  I've received a message that approximately one third (1/3) of the Mayors salary is tax free. That would be $15,509.00 TAX FREE.

Follow up to this post is located here.

Alberta Party: First Test of New Leaders' Ethics

There have been a few people asking on Twitter whether Glenn Taylor, the newly elected leader of the Alberta Party will be stepping down as Mayor of Hinton. So far Glenn himself has not said either way. (At least not that I can find) There are no new entries on Glenn's blog, his tweets have all been thank yous and what not and no quotes in the handful of media articles.

According to Grace Wong, an avid Alberta Party supporter; "He has already stated that he would... he and his council start working on a succession plan ASAP..." She didn’t provide a link to where this was stated. The whole succession plan doesn’t make much sense. It’s not like he is the CEO of a corporation that has to engage headhunters to hire a replacement. He is an ELECTED official. He simply needs to step down and trigger a by-election.

To me this is a no brainer. He was elected as a non-partisan mayor in Hinton. Taxpayers cover his salary. Being the leader of a provincial political party automatically negates his ability to be non-partisan. The time commitment to be a leader of a party is huge and will without a doubt inhibit his availability to the town. Taxpayers of Hinton likely don’t want to pay for his time while he tours the province conducting Alberta Party business.

He really only has two choices; one step down as Mayor immediately, he should be walking into his Mayoralty office tomorrow AM with a resignation letter in hand. Or two, decline the role of leader of the Alberta Party.

The latter is unlikely; thus I fully anticipate we will hear of his resignation within 24 hours.

That is when, (if it hasn’t already) the reality will start to register with the Alberta Party brass. They can’t afford to pay a leader. At their weekend leadership convention they told membership they are currently raising about $4000.00 a month. According to them they only have one paid staff member, that being “Organizer Mike”.

Given this information it’s pretty safe to say Mike is making less than $48,000 per year; far less than he is worth. This is not uncommon in fringe parties. A lot of sweat equity goes in, by many, many volunteers.

However, once you have a full-time leader you can hardly expect them to do it out of the goodness of their heart. Even if they did, that goodness doesn’t pay for the flights or other transportation around the province. Or what about the hotel accommodations? Meals? The list goes on.

Without some quick, heavy donors; it looks like the Alberta Party will have to choose between Organizer Mike and Leader Glenn. Or one of them will have to work for free until they can bulk up the bank account a bit.

Alberta Party Leadership Convention

Today the Alberta Party held their Leadership Convention to elect a new leader. I will give credit where it is due; they used some great innovations, such as live broadcasting of the event and electronic voting for their members.

There were a couple of things that did surprise me though. First was the inordinate amount of attention they were giving to those of us on Twitter who were needling them throughout the day. Why did they even respond? Why not just ignore us?

They really went off the deep end though, when the MC of the event read out one of my Tweets to the audience. Actually, it wasn't even my Tweet originally, simply one that I had "retweeted" from someone else.  This occurred at the wrap up of all the leadership candidates speaking; surely there are better ways to respect these candidates than giving an active member of an opposing party, public acknowledgement.

In fact they were paying so much attention to me, that my username started to trend in Calgary. 

And the winner is......

Glenn Taylor, Mayor of Hinton, Alberta. Glenn pulled it off in the first round of balloting by garnering 665 votes out of 1200 votes.  According to their President (the night before on Twitter); they had 2066 members eligible to vote. Today that number somehow grew to 2200. Either way, according to their own press release voter turnout was 58.8%. This was the second surprise of the day. Nearly 42% of their members couldn't even bother to vote!!! They couldn't have made it any easier. You could phone in, do it online, you could do that on Friday or Saturday, rain, snow or sun.

Even the Wildrose Alliance in their 2009 leadership race managed to get nearly 72% of the members to vote. And they used old fashioned mail-in and in-person ballots.

One of the Alberta Party's big mantra's is "engaging the 60% of people who didn't vote in the last election". Well, again credit where credit is due..... apparently they have engaged them.... and guess what 40% of them still don't vote.

As an interesting side note, Glenn Taylor got more votes in 1997 when he ran for the NDP, than the Alberta Party has members.

A commenter in Calgary Herald also put the vote into perspective with these thoughts.

So 1200 Alberta Party members voted on a new leader with Mr. Taylor winning on the first ballot with 665 votes. Let's see how these results stack up with other recent leadership contests in Alberta. 

In 2009, Danielle Smith won the Wildrose Alliance Party leadership with 6,295 votes out of 8,297 ballots cast. Taylor's 665 votes would have qualified him for a last place finish, behind 2nd-place contender Mark Dynholm's 1,905 votes.

In 2008, 4,575 Alberta Liberals voted for their party's leader, with David Swann receiving 2,468 of those votes. Glenn Taylor's 665 votes would have placed him 3rd in that race behind Dave Taylor's 1,616 votes and ahead of Mo Elsalhy's 491 votes.

And in 2006, the first round of the PC leadership race produced 97,690 votes and no clear winner on the first ballot. Taylor's 665 votes would have qualified him for last place, behind 8th-place Gary McPherson's 744 votes and compared to front-runner Jim Dinning's 29,470.

Just a little perspective...

Oh the irony.......

One of the things the political pundits on the left like to skew is how many people didn't vote for the winning candidate. Alberta Party supporters did this plenty after the Federal Election... things like "60% of Canadians didn't even vote for the Conservatives". So I have no qualms turning the table on them and say; "nearly 70% of their membership doesn't even support their new leader."

Let the music play.....

Music was a big part of today's event. They had bongo drums scattered about the room and outgoing interim Leader Sue Huff did a marvelous rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"; proving she does indeed have a sense of humor. (The Alberta Party is often referred to as the Rainbow and Lollipop Party).

During the breaks in the programmed events, there was prerecorded music provided by the convention centre that was fed over the live streaming video.  At the end of the convention they "rolled credits" on the screens all the while playing Corb Lunds' "This is My Prairie".  This was interesting on two fronts; one the selection itself, given the lyrics in my opinion are somewhat political. And two, that an artist would agree to be directly affiliated with a political party.

On Twitter I asked; "Wonder if #abparty paid @CorbLund for rights to publicly broadcast his recording?

People of course jumped down my throat saying they did nothing wrong. But it was indeed a genuine question on my part. A couple of years ago I was asked to approach Paul Brandt's agent about using one of his songs at a convention and we were turned down. They cited reasons of not wanting to be connected to a political party. Now Alberta Party members claim there was no public broadcast of it. Well how is it then, that I heard it in Calgary when the convention was in Edmonton?  Is the internet not public? According to Evan Adnams broadcasting via the web is doesn't count. Huh, who knew. Learn something new everyday.