You’ve told us that you’re fed up with unsustainable spending by your local government, which often translates into property tax hikes. You work hard to live within your means and expect your municipality to do the same.
The fact is: local governments are spending faster than their communities are growing. To support these spending habits, municipal governments are having you foot the bill.
CFIB shares your frustrations and created the Manitoba Municipal Spending Watch report to shine a light on spending levels of Manitoba’s 27 largest municipalities, and to make sure you are getting the best value for your tax dollars.
New Manitoba Municipal Spending Watch report (4th Edition)
The 4th Edition report studies operating spending from 2008 to 2015. The report finds that while progress was made in 2015 to rein in spending, the majority of Manitoba`s largest municipalities continue to spend far more than needed on day-to-day operating spending.
This overspending has cost Manitobans $1.17 billion since 2008!
How did your community do?
Labour Costs
Labour costs are driving spending increases across Manitoba`s largest municipalities. In 2015, labour costs accounted for 59% of total municipal operating spending. This cost has increased by 28% overall from 2008-2015!
Increasing Labour Costs are often driven by overly generous wages and benefits. CFIB’s latest Wage Watch Report (2015) reveals a large gap between public and private sector wages for the same occupation. In Manitoba, municipal employees receive a wage advantage of just over 2% compared to a private sector employee in the same job. However, when employer contributions to benefit plans and hours work are included, this gap increases to 14.1%!
Recommendations
We will continue to push municipal leaders to spend sustainably and ensure they use taxpayers’ money as efficiently as possible. With this in mind, CFIB made several recommendations in the report for municipalities to follow.
For a full list of our recommendations, you can read the full report.
Next steps
CFIB will continue to push municipal leaders to spend sustainably and ensure they use taxpayers’ money as efficiently as your business does.
With the Manitoba Municipal Elections happening on October 24th, 2018, CFIB will be meeting with candidates and sharing this data to ensure sustainable spending is a priority in these elections and going forward.