Golden Parachute and It’s back.

The CAO’s Golden Parachute?

My goodness.

I’m really beginning to question all my years of hard work to eke out a modest living; when all along the answer has been staring me in the face.

Become a senior bureaucrat for the City of Windsor.

I mean really.

Where else can one secure employment, decide to leave and get paid a nice hefty severance package totalling about 20% of my salary over 5 years – just on the heels of a divisive city strike?

The Windsor Star online edition reported:

Skorobohacz, according to the provisions of his 2004 employment contract, will receive in severance a minimum of 12 1/2 months pay and a maximum of 15 months, depending on when he finds other employment.The financial implications surrounding Tyagi’s departure remain unclear. Francis said there were “no terms … that have been arrived at” that he could share with taxpayers.

Skorobohacz earned $220,551.49 in salary and benefits in 2008 according to Ontario’s Sunshine List and Tyagi earned $153,792.44.

A maximum of 15 months depending when other employment is found?   That’s far more generous than even the Federal Government!

As Windsor City Blog reported:

This is to advise you that our Chief Administrative Officer, John Skorobohacz, has announced his resignation from the Corporation of the City of Windsor.

That’s $275,689.39 for quitting a job.

I’m still trying to get this sorted out in my head. 

An employee decides to leave and taxpayers have to foot the bill dependent upon whether or not the employee finds new employment?

It’s one thing to have one’s contract terminated prematurely and its quite another to quit your job and be compensated for this – but one can’t blame Mr. Skorobohacz – he didn’t approve this princely contract – the council of 2004 did – which included Mayor Eddie Francis.

So either the council of the day are horrible negotiators or we aren’t exactly being told the entire story behind the departure of Mr. Skorobohacz.

I can only conclude this because according to employment lawer, Allan Kaufman:

Severance pay is only paid to those employees whom the employer dismisses. If you chose to resign voluntarily, or because you expected to be fired soon, you will have no legal right to severance pay. The only exception is in the rare case where you quit because the employer did everything to force you to quit (“constructive dismissal”), which is a situation you would need to discuss with a lawyer. If, however, you approach your employer before resigning, and negotiate a departure that is agreed to by both you and the employer, you might be able to negotiate some form of severance payment from the employer.

Unfortunately, such largesse at taxpayer expense doesn’t seem to be all that unusual in the public sector:

When it was disclosed last month that Henri-Paul Rousseau had received $378,750 in severance pay when he resigned as president of the Caisse de dépôt last August, the finance critic for Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec called it “incredible.” After all, Rousseau had quit voluntarily, to take another job. And in the private sector in such circumstances, it’s highly unusual to receive severance pay. Still, the ADQ finance critic, François Bonnardel, shouldn’t have been shocked to learn that such perks exist in Quebec’s public sector.

I’ve asked the City Clerk for a copy of the contract for the position of the CAO – though I suspect it has long been buried in the vaults of city hall and will require some $500,000 to find it.

It’s back…

The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel deal that is.

According to tonight’s online Windsor Star:

Faced with a dire economic reality “much worse” than he anticipated when elected, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing predicts lots of tough decisions, including the potential sale of Detroit’s share of the tunnel to Windsor, to avoid receivership by the end of the fiscal year…

…Last month Bing had an hour-long meeting with Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis where they discussed Windsor’s public worker strike and the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel.

Last year negotiations between Detroit and Windsor to sell the U.S. rights to the tunnel to Windsor collapsed with the scandal and downfall of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Recall, back on August 29, 2009 Mayor Francis stated:

“The tunnel keeps coming up because they’ve indicated it’s an asset they’d like to dispose of,” he said. “Whether that’s the case now, I don’t know.”

Circumstances have changed drastically since the tunnel discussions of a year or two ago and any potential deal would have to start from scratch, the mayor said.

“There has been a significant traffic decline and the economy is vastly different than when the tunnel was first talked about in 2006,” Francis said. Those factors would affect the value of the property.

Just back in February it was reported in American media that:

Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. recently proposed that the city lease its toll revenue from the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel to a private contractor for an upfront payment of possibly $100 million to help dent a city budget deficit.

“That’s a projection of what we might be able to get from an operator,”said Anthony Neely, the city’s deputy communications director. “Our [lease] estimate is 50 to 75 years.”

And Mayor Francis  questioned it at that time:

Mayor Eddie Francis questioned how Detroit arrived at a $100-million price tag for control of the U.S. side of the tunnel.

Windsor has gone through an “exhaustive process” to arrive last year at a $75-million value, he said.

“That was the number we were prepared to pay back then, but economic conditions have changed considerably and are very different than five or six months ago.”

The mayor said 2010 toll revenues for the Detroit side are projected at about US$11.5 million, but the city has no way of knowing exactly since it is controlled by Alinda, a private company which holds a lease until 2020.

“Does the tunnel have revenues to support $100 million on the American side? I’d be interested in looking at their numbers,” Francis said.

Gee – when were economic conditions different, Mayor Francis? 

Back in late 2007 as you stated earlier this year or in 2006 as you are now saying? 

Recall, the email from Infrastructure Ontario dated May 15, 2008,  Ed Arditti acquired under a Freedom of Information request which stated:

Our preliminary review of the business case provided regarding the application for a $75-million IO loan to the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Corporation indicates that under our credit policy requirements, the cash flows available to service debt would support a loan in the range of ——————– at current interest rates.

The loan application is here.

About 20 character spaces make up the blacked out section of the email so it’s pretty clear Infrastructure Ontario did not approve $75-million. 

But “$XX and $XX-million” take up about the right amount of space.

So how the Windsor Star can continually report the myth that, “Under terms of the tunnel proposal, Infrastructure Ontario would lend $75 million to the recently formed Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Corporation” is beyond me.

And blaming the scandal of the former Mayor for the collapse of negotiations is all too convenient because traffic volumes were in a downward spiral and economic recession was in full swing at the time the deal was being negotiated. 

Furthermore, the loan application cited a project end date of July 2, 2008 – right around the time the scandal rationale was given.