The mayor of Craiova, Social-Democrat Olguța Vasilescu, stated on Wednesday that the draft of the new public sector pay law no longer includes a “pay cap” in local government, and a situation could arise where city hall employees earn more than the mayors themselves.

‘I have called for the reintroduction of the cap on salaries in local public administration, and to be more precise — until now, under the previous law, the salary law, no employee of a city hall, for example, or of a county council could exceed the salary of the deputy mayor or the vice-president of the county council. This worked very well because, no matter how high the bonuses might have gone, let’s say, there was this cap that effectively limited the employee’s pay. Now, under the new version, this cap disappears, meaning that if it decreases— for example, the bonus for European funds for mayors decreases and increases for employees, we will find ourselves back in the situation we had in 2017, where more than half of the employees in a City Hall had a higher salary than the mayor. ‘This is exactly what the 2017 pay law sought to correct,’ explained Vasilescu at the Ministry of Labor, where she participated in debates on the new pay law.

She added that, according to her calculations, the salaries of local government employees are increasing “significantly,” despite the fact that mayors did not want this.

‘I’ll give you the calculation I have from the Craiova City Hall. Until now, payroll expenses were 53,400,000; now they’re going up to 66,750,000. That means an increase of 13,000,000 lei, over 2,000,000 euros, which we would have to pay extra for employee salaries, while the mayor’s salary is decreasing by 500 lei. “In other words, it is clear that there is an irregularity in this salary law, and we have asked for it to be corrected so that we can at least achieve fairness,” the mayor stated.

The mayor of Craiova also said that from discussions held at the ministry, he understood that officials’ allowances would increase in stages until 2031.

‘We must pay very close attention to all the discussions taking place in the public sphere and closely monitor what is happening, because it is possible that what we want—namely, for officials’ salaries, for example, to decrease— given that they have been capped from 2018 until now, might lead to a situation where even the janitor earns more than the minister in the ministry. (…) And I’ll tell you that, as mayor, I’m not happy about increasing City Hall salaries by over 2 million euros, given that up until now we’ve been told we need to tighten our belts, that everyone must tighten their belts, that salaries in local public administration are already very high, and yet, under this law, we must find a source of funding of over 2 million euros to cover these increases,” said Olguța Vasilescu.

Source: AGERPRES