Candidate Mike Savage demonstrated shockingly bad judgement by paying himself a $10,000 monthly stipend from his campaign funds, and now critics will with justification accuse mayor Mike Savage of being part of an elite that’s out-of-touch with how regular people lead their lives, and who will have a conflict of interest every time council deals with business related to one of his campaign contributors.
The Chronicle-Herald reported on the payments this morning, and quoted Savage defending them:
“I’m not ashamed of the fact that I needed to earn an income,” Savage said, adding that he’s the sole earner in his household.
Savage, 52, said the monthly stipend matched his base salary at a private-sector job he held for about a year before he left to begin serious campaigning this summer.
[….]Asked why the stipend arrangement wasn’t made public earlier, he said he wasn’t trying to withhold such fiscal details of his campaign. He said he told reporters about the situation when they asked this week.
“You don’t discuss your campaign in public during an election,” Savage said. “You don’t talk about how much you’re spending on signs or how much you’re spending on advertising, you don’t talk about the details of the campaign (and) the strategy of the campaign. If I had been asked, I would have been very honest with people and told them.” [emphasis added]
But Savage was asked directly about campaign finances during his “Mike chat” on October 11, nine days before the election, and he did not reveal payments to himself (at the 38:00 mark”:
Transcribed:
(HOST) BRENDEN SOMMERHALDER: This question is about your campaign, and this is a question about how many people are paid on your campaign? [laughs]
MIKE SAVAGE: We have two—well we have one person who is paid, that’s my campaign manager, and we pay people gas or little things here or there to do aspects of the campaign. We have one campaign director that’s paid.
SOMMERHALDER: And I’m a proud volunteer. [laughs]
As mayor, Savage will be presiding over a city government that rules over 400,000 with an average annual household income of about $40,000. Many of the most important issues facing government—the St. Pat’s-Alexandra school issue, a large chunk of the people who regularly use transit, for example—involve people who make far less.
For most people, and especially for people at the lower end of the income spectrum, changing jobs is a major life move, made with trepidation. Very few people have the luxury of quitting one job and maintaining the same income while they look for another.
Savage, however, seems to think he’s entitled to maintain his income, even when not on anyone’s payroll. That’s a luxury few can match, and puts him in a tiny elite. The fact that his income over the last few months came, essentially, from large development companies and other high-income Haligonians demonstrates that there are two economies, two ways of life, in this town: one for the special and connected, one for everyone else.
By paying himself a hefty 10K per month out of the campaign, Savage is sending his constituency a clear message: “I ain’t one of you.”
Savage defends his payments by, in effect, saying he’s special and deserving: “he’s the sole earner in his household,” explains the Herald. Most households have two people working full-time, to help meet ends, so Savage is already removed from the everyday life of his constituents. But to assume that he should be protected from the fears of income loss and uncertainty between jobs because, well, because he’s Mike Savage, brings in another level of removal.
I’m reminded of two council candidates this past election. Gail McQuarrie, a bus driver who ran in District 2, and Tom Lavers, a firefighter who ran in District 11, were required, by law, to give up their city jobs, and therefore their incomes, while running for office. I talked to two other city workers who wanted to run for office but didn’t, because they couldn’t manage the loss of income. McQuarrie and Lavers probably lost about $8,000 each, plus the cost of paying into their health and retirement funds, to run for office. The non-candidates decided that was too costly. These are the kinds of decisions everyone else has to make, when contemplating running for office.
Blue collar workers have one set of issues to deal with, and Mike Savage has another.
And yes, this is exactly the point, and directly relevant. You do not get to pay yourself 10K a month from you campaign fund, unless you get big money contributions from people like you: people with a sense of entitlement, who play by a different set of rules than we rabble.
This is what is problematic with Savage’s campaign contributions. He has defined himself, his expectations from society, what he is due, by being part of the economic elite of this town. For Savage, his station in life is primary, and the duties of a candidate or a mayor secondary. This looks a whole lot like how Peter Kelly behaved.
I’ve talked about the potential conflicts of interest related to Savage’s campaign contributions before. But the biggest conflict is one of attitude: developers and business owners are in his small social circle of the economic elite, the source of his income when he’s looking for work, while city workers, the people in public employee unions, the people who take the bus and go to office jobs, the staff at restaurants and so forth, are in a different class and don’t deserve that special treatment.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2012.
Mr. Manager’s first day as mayor! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJCdCXFslY
You know what HRM? I’m sick of it. Stop blaming Mike Savage !! You are the total fuck-twits who elected him.
He’s not my Mayor.
Right now I’m beyond disappointed. The whole campaign finance system needs some work, and the guy we’ve elected to lead, obviously doesn’t get it.
When you give a political donation, the expectation is that it will be used by the candidate in his or her campaign. To pay for signs, brochures, parties etc. You know, campaigning! It’s not the expectation that it’ll be used by the candidate to maintain his or her lifestyle. One of the few concrete rules in the Municipal Elections Act regarding campaign contributions is that campaigns are to maintain a bank account that is separate from a candidate’s personal funds. The reason is obvious, mixing funds invites corruption. You don’t have to look far to find politicians who took money to enrich themselves. What Savage did by paying himself is legal because our rules are so lax, but I don’t think it’s ethical and it certainly doesn’t set a good example.
Sadly, in some ways, it kind of doesn’t matter because, unlike some other Canadian cities, we don’t have any rules controlling what happens to surpluses. Candidates often donate leftover funds to charity or hold it in reserve for next time, but there’s nothing that says they can’t build a pool, go to Europe or buy a boat or whatever strikes their fancy. It’s all legal and that’s just sad and actually really dangerous to the democratic system. Savage could have skipped the stipend, lived on credit and then just reimbursed himself quietly after it was all done. In some ways, you at least have to give him credit for disclosing the stipend because there’s nothing forcing him to say how he spent any of his money! (yet another huge flaw in the process)
Hopefully the campaign finance rules will be tightened during the next 4 years, but this doesn’t fill me with optimism.
This must be one of those ‘other’ incomes on the Revenue Canada form that I don’t know about. Stipend income, $10,000 monthly, not an income no way, it is just a stipend, yet Mike Savage is paying all the appropriate income taxes. Why? How? I need that book, Professional Politicians for Dummies, it must tell you in there how to claim a stipend-able income that is not an income.
I do know who he can list as his employer though, you.
Everyone who is surprised to hear this, raise your hands.
…even if this were a medium in which I could see your hands raised, I hope I wouldn’t.
Will, you’ve got the right of this. All of this outrage should be directed toward the morons who elected him. There were plenty of us being plenty vocal prior to the election, pointing out time and again the discrepancies between what Savage was preaching and how Savage was acting. And really, nobody spoke louder than Savage himself. Preening, posturing, throwaway comments (I’m sure I neededn’t mention the steelworker/criminal equivalency, but hey, since we’re here…), nobody worked harder against Mike Savage than Mike Savage himself did. I guess it was lucky for him that he had 340,000 of his closest friends backing him up.
Ask him why he accepted money from that Casey woman in New York. Foreigners interfering in our politics; why do we allow it ?
shocking………sorry did i say shocking, i meant utterly predictable
But remember he is not political. You know it’s not easy living on $10,000 a month.
For the record I didn’t vote for Savage, but I’m still a little confused as to why this is a big deal. When you give a candidate money you’re contributing to their campaign. If the candidate takes in enough money to not work and can spend more time knocking on doors, that’s a pretty big help to the campaign. Seems to me people got what they were paying for with their donations.
I also don’t see why this makes Savage any more beholden to developers than if he had spent the money on signs or pamphlets. $5,000 from a developer is $5,000 from a developer. Perhaps you could argue that we shouldn’t allow developers or other corporations to contribute to campaigns, but that’s not a Savage-specific issue.
” I didn’t tell you about taking $10,000 a month because you never asked ” – the new slogan for Savage transparency.
Is that what we will have to live with for the next 4 years ?
That is as low a bar to step over as you will ever find.
Do any of his supporters believe that such a stance is what they expected ?
Don’t we deserve more ?
Mike Savage is out for Mike Savage NOT John Q. Public. You don’t have to fool all the people all the time. Just fool them enough to get elected. Then, from the Mayor’s chair on to a provincial or federal seat for the big bucks.
Joe, Mikey went to Bill’s School of Politics, don’t ask, don’t tell. I was willing to give him a chance but everytime he opens his mouth new crap spills out. At least with Peter it took him a bit of time to fuck things up and get into financial troubles.
I still can’t believe the idiots voted this guy back to the trough. I wonder what he was doing in civilian life that warranted a $10,000/month paycheque.
Proud to support Mike. Not at all surprised by the standard rage against the machine line Tim is feeding us. Hey Tim, why don’t you tell us how much you make? For transparency sake.
I’m sure that there must be some reasonable well-educated people who voted for Mike Savage – just based on numbers alone, a few must be in there. Just the same, it’s a constant source of amazement to me how the Savage Online Defense Squad (you know, SODS) seem to miss the point entirely.
We are not simply angry about our preferred candidates not getting elected. I did not vote for Savage, but after election night I was certainly hoping that he would get out there, do the job, and prove me wrong. What I am angry about is exactly how quickly Savage went ahead and re-affirmed the negative stereotypes about himself and politicians in general.
We’ve somehow elected a fellow as mayor now who campaigned for transparency, and then actively thwarted it. We’ve elected a fellow as mayor now who campaigned on the idea of campaign finance reform (especially the idea of setting limits on amounts raised and of restricting fundraising to the election year) who just raised 1/3 of a million dollars for his campaign, the most expensive campaign in the HRM’s history by far, and who is now talking about setting any excess money aside for use at the next election. And now, we’re getting word that Savage pocketed $10k every month he was campaigning. Whatever your opinion on the amount of money, how can anyone NOT be disgusted with his flippant response when asked about it? “Oh, tee hee, nobody asked!” which is in and of itself a misleading statement.
And the real hell of it is, we can’t even say that we as a municipality deserve better. We had our shot, and for some reason I don’t completely understand we elected this walking stereotype into the mayor’s office.
By all means though, silly SODS, keep up the obfuscation and misdirection.
Lookatme – Without Tim your boy would’t have been elected. No other media outlet broke the story of the Thibeault estate, a story which truly marked the beginning of the end the Kelly fiasco.
What Tim earns is not of any concern to you. me or anyone else. He ain’t sucking on the public teat.
The movers and shakers wanted a bum boy, and for $10 grand a month they got one. Problem is that he is now our bum boy and we have to pay him $13 grand a month, are we just stupid or what?
Russ, only those who voted for the SOD
After his May 2011 defeat as MP Mike Savage was entitled to a severance of $78,866 and was entitled to a pension of $31,592 at age 55 ( on May 13 2015, which is 17 months before the next election).
source : http://www.taxpayer.com/sites/default/file…
Shortly after his defeat he returned to a job in the private sector which paid him approx $120,000 a year.
Tim, you’re turning into a professional troll. Savage hasn’t even taken office yet and you have already compared him to PK – on what basis again? Taking a pay check while campaigning? People donated money to him to use how he saw fit so it’s not illegal and I wouldn’t even consider immoral or wrong. Why? Because just yesterday you called a bus driver and HRM firefighter “suckers” because they took a leave from work AND didn’t receive any pay. I don’t follow what your rational is.
With all the election coverage you do I’m surprised you haven’t clued in that the city voted for Savage by a huge margin which means the majority wanted him – the VAST majority. If you have such an issue with the politics in this city why didn’t you run in the election? Because you don’t act, you complain. Writing articles, acting like you are the defender of all that is good in this city. I really wish you did run for office because you have a following, seem to understand this city and are well connected in the right way (sometimes). But you didn’t. So please stop trolling until our future mayor takes office and makes some decisions, because right now you are sounding like a sore loser who lost in the election.
The good news is Tim has a new adversary in “Poor Mike” who needs $10,000 to live on. Ever see that picture in the Horrid where he looks like he’s smirking? Well he was. He managed to fool the voters. It would be fun to know what the results would have been if “Poor Mike” released financials like the others.
cuke25-
Your idea of “vast majority of the city” and mine, must differ. Only 37% of eligible voters, voted. Even if every one of them voted for Savage, that’s not the vast majority of the city, that’s the vast majority of a small percentage of the city.
I didn’t vote for Savage. My vote went to another. I knew he was just another professional politician who cares about one thing- himself. The attitude towards this stipend just proves it. It’s not that he paid himself from the campaign donations that’s at issue, it’s the amount and his reasoning for it. His attitude just shows that he’s out of touch with his constituents, already. He doesn’t represent me and is incapable of empathising with someone like me. I don’t want that kind of person being my city’s leader.
i said this the whole election campaign in every post on here and was ridiculed as a hater. Savage will be no different than Kelly, so why is everyone that hates kelly voting for him?
I don’t even see why the amount was an issue. We know Savage was making that much in the private sector, and more as an MP. Presumably he has a mortgage, and car payments, and everything else that goes along with those salaries, to pay for. Do we expect people to sell their house to run for mayor?
And yes, there are people for whom it is difficult to run for office due to cost. But this seems more like a situation where we should be finding it easier for these people to run rather than making it harder for people like Savage to run.
And no, Savage is not a member of the working class. But there weren’t ever any illusions that he was. People voted for him knowing full well that he had money.
All in all, this whole uproar seems like sour grapes and money envy to me.
Hipp maybe it’s because when “Poor Mike” was asked who was being paid he neglected to say he himself was being paid. “Poor Mike” has the habit of either not or completely answer a question.
Maybe it’s because it’s none of our fucking business how much he paid himself. When public money is involved, then yes, I agree we should have full disclosure over how much our government reps make, but in this case, this was money given to him. You people are grasping at straws and looking for any reason to complain.
hipp5 – he kept talking ‘transparency’. We want him to walk the talk and we know it wasn’t public money.
A poor start because the media will be wondering if he hides information until a journalist, a councillor or a voter asks the right answer .
Even after paying 50% tax on the almost $79,000 severance he received in 2011 he would have been able to fund the 3 months he wasn’t working and have change left over.
Poor judgement.
Broc, it seems at least one contributor disagrees with you as they want their contribution back. No one is denying that he can pay himself. It is the fact that when he was asked who was being paid, he said his manager and an assistant (both legitimate) and somehow omits mentioning himself. “Poor Mike” maybe following the law but I wonder how things would have changed if he, like the others showed the books. Remember following the law does not equate with being honest or moral. “Poor Mike” campaigned on transparency but so far his transparency is irking a lot of people. Hopefully “Poor Mike’s” view of transparency will differ in office than what he had shown in the campaign.
TDF,
Even at a 37% voter turnout he accumulated over 21% of votes from the eligible voting population. That’s still higher then Tom Martin. Like it or not, he IS the mayor of your city.
This is a significant piece of news. I realize that it is an opinion piece, however the writer fails to say whether there are any rules dealing with the matter of a candidate taking pay out of campaign donations. Did Savage break any rules????
This is a load of BS. Tim, grow the f@@ up. The guy hasn’t been in office for a day and the sky is falling already. Give him a chance.
Do the people of HRM deserve more? Absolutely not; they are a bunch of lazy, entitled, whiners.
citygal, he absolutely did not break any rules. That is what people do not seem to understand. This is nothing more than sour grapes.
I don’t think this article was meant to show if Mike has broken any rules.
I believe the point of the article was to expose a side that everyone was afraid of.
He did that with his campaign donations, what do you think he’s going to do with your tax dollars?
Well I believe that has already been answered within days of the election.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/157573-…
Well if that’s how they start out, how else do you think they’re going to run this city?
Also if you listen to the interview posted with this article, one of the questions from a viewer what’s the biggest challenge he’ll face in HRM? His answer was he’ll have an open and transparent council. That’s fine and dandy except last Tuesday, Nov 6th, 2012, this is what happened:
http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/archiv…
How are you going to gain trust by already showing us that you can be trusted through holding a “secret session” instead of the transparent promise you made?
This isn’t about how much he took or whether he broke any laws. There maybe no law against a certain activity but it doesn’t mean it’s moral and logical.
It’s food for thought.
Did anyone count the number of times the evil “developers” of Halifax, the ones looking to spend millions of their own money and hire thousands of our citizens, were mentioned in this piece? I lost interest before I reached the bottom…
I guess because these evil developers have money to spend, they must be out of step with the rabble of Halifax too.
Nothing like transposing the American class warfare concept on Halifax to get our city on the right track.
Not that I voted for Savage, I didn’t. Not that I think taking $10K a month from an election sludge fund is classy, it isn’t.
@Randomness: Did you read the Herald article, or just the title? The raise was suggested by a separate entity which has been researching it since 2010, and is a 5.3% total raise for the mayor and 6.9% for council.
It’s not like the money’s going to come from nowhere. Council was reduced from 24 to 16, so there’s some recently freed-up money to work with.
They’re welcome to turn down the raises, but I don’t think they will and really, why should they? Would you?
And yet Teamfarrell the panel never added severance pay and what’s one of the first things Council wants to do? Yep, that’s right, they want to impose severance pay to councillors who lose their seats. I just see more and more of them and “Poor Mike” wanting more entitlements.
Tim, I thought you would be jumping on this. They need to be carefully watched.
@Teamfarrell:
Yes of course I read the whole article and I read who suggested the raise and was researched since 2010. I just find it very convenient that they suggested it at this convenient time. When the seats were reduced from 24 to 16.
If the increases were truly researched back then, why were they not suggested to Peter Kelly when he was in office? Mayor is mayor regardless of who it is. If they truly believe that a pay increase, in addition to the $150k earned annually by the mayor, they would have suggested that to Peter Kelly.
The fact that this was put forward and suggested right after the reduction of 8 seats. That to me shows mismanagement of funds that can be used to better the city and not to give raises.
Honestly I believe the mayor’s pay should be a set pay. $150k yearly is more than enough for the average house hold. You don’t even have to have 2 incomes with that.
I wouldn’t care as much if it wasn’t “OUR” money, but it is all our taxes that we pay, that could be used to fix the health care system, to support the elderly, to provide better schools and education rather than firing 156 teachers this school year due to lack of funding.