More Secrecy from Ken Runion – He’s Hiding Town Salaries
Supervisor Ken Runion continues his secrecy when it comes to town government. He refuses to release a list of town salaries.
Public employee salaries are public information. In fact, the seethroughny.net website is a database of government employee salaries in New York, though its Guilderland town salaries are not up to date.
In the past, the salary list was made available as an attached schedule to town board materials presented at the January organizational meeting. It is a practice Mr. Runion has stopped.
What the list would show is that Mr. Runion’s yearly salary is $103,975. His salary has jumped by more than $40,000 since he took office, a hike more than twice the inflation rate for that period.
You, as a citizen, have every right to contact the town and insist a yearly salary list be provided to you. The reluctance to provide such basic taxpayer information that is completely up to date must be resisted by all those concerned about how their tax dollars are spent.
Open government is not just a slogan, it is the only way citizens can cultivate informed judgments about their government. We should all push for as much transparency as possible.
All content is posted by Warren Redlich, a Guilderland Town Board
member, and
is not subject to the approval of Mr. Runion or the Town of
Guilderland.