After a scathing report from Auditor General Sonia Webster sparked a public outcry last week, House of Assembly members are defending their controversial closed-door decision to double their baseline salaries from the start of 2024.
However, a response they issued at the start of this week omitted key context, and they did not respond to the Beacon’s requests for evidence in support of their claims.
In the Sept. 21 statement, members argued that the increase — which boosted their collective baseline pay from $681,000 to nearly $1.5 million — was not secretive and was necessary to restore “fairness” and “parity” with senior civil servants after nearly three decades without a pay review.
They also said their December 2023 decision followed professional advice from PricewaterhouseCoopers and senior public officials and was handled within the “normal legislative and budgetary framework.”
Auditor’s claims
The claims offer a stark contrast to the picture painted by the auditor general.
Ms. Webster’s report alleged that legislators met informally behind closed doors on Dec. 19, 2023, the same day they passed the 2024 budget, and agreed to award themselves the maximum salary increase in a range recommended by PwC.
As a result, baseline salaries for backbenchers jumped to $71,230, while Premier Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley now earns $176,243. When allowances are factored in, the premier’s total annual compensation surpasses $250,000, ministers earn around $200,000, and even the lowest-paid members take home about $134,000.
“The significant increase in HOA members’ salaries was implemented without any form of public disclosure,” Ms. Webster wrote, warning that the raises could substantially increase the cost of legislators’ post-service pensions and gratuities under the controversial 2021 law known as the “Greedy Bill.”
‘No secrecy’
In their statement this week, legislators pushed back, insisting there was “no secrecy” involved in the decision.
“The compensation review … was delegated to senior public officials” who “had care and control of the process,” the statement claims. “At all times, the process followed the normal legislative and budgetary framework, and the discussions took place in forums designed for such deliberations.”
They also suggested that members of the public could have learned about the increase by reading news reports or government budget estimates.
“The amount of the members’ increase would have been documented in the estimates for the year 2024, which was passed in the House of Assembly and made public; and in January 2024, the matter of salary increases was locally circulated in the news to which members spoke publicly on the topic,” the statement noted.
No evidence found
The Beacon, however, found no evidence that the size of the raises was publicly disclosed until Ms. Webster’s report was tabled last week in the HOA — and no evidence that the raises were publicly acknowledged at all until a passing mention in the HOA nearly a year after they took effect.
The 2024 budget estimates do include a line item for recurrent expenditures for “House of Assembly members” that jumps from $394,000 to about $1.14 million in 2024 — but the figures do not match either their old or new collective baseline salaries. Another line item for HOA “personnel emoluments” jumps by about $760,000, but the document does not specify if this number includes HOA members, HOA staff or both.
Neither budget line includes any notation clearly stating that it represents legislators’ salaries — and HOA members didn’t respond to an invitation to explain how taxpayers could have deduced their raises from the budget document.
Baseline salaries
In their statement, HOA members also noted that their baseline salaries had not been adjusted since 1995 — a “stagnation” that they said left the lowest-paid members making a $36,000 annual baseline salary.
This pay level, they claimed, had eroded “the financial viability of full-time legislative service for some individuals” while allowing several senior civil servants to earn more than elected members who carry “higher constitutional responsibilities.”
However, the statement omits a key detail: In 2009, HOA members quietly approved a raise that gave most of them approximately $30,000 in new allowances on top of their baseline salary and existing allowances.
Before the 2024 increase, the lowest-paid members earned about $99,000 each year in total, and the premier topped out at about $154,000.
Members did not respond to a Beacon request to explain why their statement did not mention their allowances.
Percentages
The members also stressed that their raises accounted for just 2.9 percent of the $27.7 million total salary-increase package, with the “bulk of the funding” directed to rank-and-file civil servants.
“The decision was in line with what was recommended by senior officials and financial information provided by the Office of the Financial Secretary, which they believe to be an informed decision at that time,” the statement noted.
Given that there are 13 elected HOA members and around 2,500 public officers, this statistic suggests that the HOA members’ average raise was more than five times the public officers’ average (see graphic).
And because legislators awarded themselves the raise erroneously believing that the total $27.7 million package would cost just $11.7 million, they appear to have made the decision believing that they would receive nearly seven percent of the total spend.
This would have meant the members’ raise average would have come in about 14 times higher than public officers’.
HOA members did not respond to Beacon queries on these calculations either.
Public outcry
The raises came on the heels of a vocal public backlash over the so-called “Greedy Bill,” a 2021 law that dramatically expanded legislators’ post-term payouts and benefits.
Though lawmakers walked back parts of that law in 2023 — partially removing a particularly controversial provision that allowed them to continue drawing a full salary for up to four years after leaving office — they left in place a key provision that makes pensions and gratuities more generous by counting allowances.
Opposition member Myron Walwyn warned during a 2023 debate on the matter that post-term payouts could total $5 million annually — a sum he said “could build a school.”
With the members’ new raises, such long-term payout commitments could increase substantially — and Ms. Webster warned of the consequences in her report.
“The potential impact of these new salaries on retirement benefits and pensions under amended legislation for HOA members have not been discussed or addressed,” her report states, adding, “There should be adequate public disclosure of the increases made to HOA salaries and the implication for the recently increased retirement benefits.”
The HOA members’ statement did not address this matter.
Criticism continues
Meanwhile, criticism of the raises has continued.
In an interview aired Sept. 22 on 284 Media, New Life Baptist Church Senior Pastor John Cline suggested that HOA members’ raises should have been phased in over time like many public officers’ increases.
“When there are persons in this community who cannot make ends meet and we are saying even some raises that were given [to public officers] were graduated over time, why couldn’t you do the same thing for yourselves?” Mr. Cline asked, adding, “I believe that is where the outrage is. The country is under budgetary constraint. We are spending just as much, if not more, than we are taking in.”
In response to the Beacon’s queries, the HOA said on Sept. 22 that HOA members were “currently focused on the constitutional review and matters related to the visit of Baroness Margaret Hodge” but “there is a commitment to addressing your concerns with the utmost urgency.”
Ms. Webster declined to comment on the HOA members’ response to her report.
