NSP salaries to stay secret - TheChronicleHerald.ca

NSP salaries to stay secret

No hearings means no peek at bigwigs' paycheques — NDP

By JUDY MYRDEN Business Reporter

Fri. Sep 19 - 5:14 AM

A backroom deal on raising power rates will keep Nova Scotia Power executives' salaries secret, NDP finance critic Graham Steele told government regulators Thursday.

"The fact is that the levels of compensation are simply enormously out of keeping with other incomes in the province of Nova Scotia," he said.

Mr. Steele said the executives' salaries, bonuses and stock options were supposed to be on the agenda at the Utility and Review Board's public hearings into the power company's request to increase electricity rates. But the hearings, scheduled to last two weeks, were scuttled with the announcement this week that Nova Scotia Power and some of its biggest customers had reached a "settlement agreement" on a rate hike of 9.4 per cent.

"With respect to executive compensation, the settlement agreement ensures that this topic will go unexamined for at least another year, even though it is the one topic that probably catches the public's attention the most," Mr. Steele told a three-member review board panel.

"Although not everyone will claim to be an expert on rate-setting for Nova Scotia Power, it is fair to say that just about everyone considers themselves an expert on incomes, whether that be a politician or power executive's income."

 

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