Plunkin' it at City Hall

Danny Williams says he doesn't take a salary.

He does, of course.

Williams donates the whole thing to his family charity.

Since the mid-1990s, members of the House of Assembly [right: Not exactly as illustrated] have quietly adopted the same practice. They take a portion of the allowances established to cover the costs of operating a constituency office and of representing their districts and hand them out to a variety of groups and individuals.

There is something fundamentally - ethically - wrong with elected officials using public money, directly or indirectly, in this way.

It doesn't take a rule book or a judge to let you know it is...wrong.

Should we be surprised in the current political climate that at least one councilor at St. John's Tammany City Hall [left] does the same thing with his annual salary of about $35,000?

As cbc.ca notes in a story on a recent racket about budget cuts,

[Ron]Ellsworth, a successful businessman, said most of his salary winds up in community groups.

"My salary goes back into my ward," Ellsworth said.

Ah yes.

The ward.

Money goes back to the ward.

Looks like Bond Papers had it right in 2005.