Last week I calculated the "transition allowances" for a handful of retiring MLAs.  It's something we normally do during an election, because one of the key numbers needed is years served and not knowing the election date makes our figures incorrect.

I did the calculations in 2008 for the provincial election and got to thinking recently: was I right?

To be sure, it's not an exact science, as unfortunately the Legislative Assembly often doesn't release precise MLA pay information until a good seven months (if we're lucky) to one year after the fiscal year ends.  So, in 2008 I would have only had MLA pay information for 2005-06 and before. Meaning, I would have had to make educated guesses at how much extra pay MLAs received for their last two years.  Not impossible, but not the easiest thing to do either.

Considering we now have 2010-11 numbers (and on-line for the first time ever! Thank you GOA for saving me $13 in photocopying fees, and hours of time photocopying, scanning, converting it to searchable PDF and then uploading to our website - like I did last year)

Here's the release we put out in 2008 with our estimates: http://taxpayer.com/alberta/mla-transition-allowances-total-8-million

So, how did I do?

Well, the answer is pretty darn good.  That is, at least on the ones we know for sure...

Of the 34 MLAs who were either defeated or retired, I:

• over-estimated 4 of them,
• under-estimated 25 of them, and
• I'm not quite sure on the other 5 (as they are have opted to spread out their payments).

But all of them are very close.  For example, 7 of the calculations are within a 1% variance, 20 are within a 5% variance and only 2 of them were more than 10% out (over-estimated Tony Abbott's by 10.9%, under-estimated Denis Ducharme's by 10.1%).

On average, I under-estimated the "Transition Allowances" by 2.4%.

If you want to check my math, feel free, I've put it all on a one page pdf here: http://taxpayer.com/sites/default/files/2008%20Election%20Transition%20Allowance%20estimate%20vs.%20comparision.pdf  

The majority of MLAs took their payments in one lump sum (21), but some have really spread it out. Jack Flaherty, Raj Pannu and Bharat Agnihotri appear to be taking their payments over 4 years, David Coutts is taking his over what appears to be 5 years, Gord Graydon and Hung Pham over 6 years (Mr. Pham's started in 2010-11) and Shiraz Shariff looks like he's taking his over 9 years.

Interestingly, I knew from reading the Members' Guide back in 2007 that MLAs could take their payments over a maximum of four years.  So, seeing some of these figures not adding up (like Mr. Shariff), I had to go and check why.  Apparently sometime in 2007 or 2008 Mr. Kowalski's Members' Services Committee opted to change this so that MLAs could take their "Transition Allowances" over as many years as they saw fit. 

Clearly a few MLAs have already taken advantage of this, as will undoubtedly more.  Mr. Kowalski, for example could take his "Transition Allowance" over, say 20 years, combined with his old MLA pension and get over $100k per year.

Ed Stelmach with his $1m+ "Transition Allowance" could spread it over the next 20 years and pull down $50k per year.  Sounds a bit like a pension...

By: Scott Hennig
Posted: December 12, 2011
Topic: Alberta

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