Municipal mayors receive pay raise, some due to administrative reform
Though typically the salaries of Estonia’s municipal mayors don’t increase leading up to local elections, over the last year more than half of the country’s local councils have granted mayors a pay raise.
As daily Postimees reported on Thursday, part of the councils said that they had increased their mayor’s salary because of the severance they were due because of the implementation of the Administrative Reform Act.
The act specifies that those mayors whose positions are about to disappear because of merging municipalities, and who had presided over local governments that voluntarily negotiated mergers, would be compensated for it in the amount of 12 monthly salaries.
The severance payment is calculated based on the average monthly salary of the preceding two years. According to the latest salary data published, 93 out of 164 local councils increased their mayors’ pay since the decision.
According to the paper, what is particularly interesting is that it isn’t the richest municipalities that lead the list, but those on the fringes of the country that had previously suffered from financial difficulties.
Editor: Dario Cavegn
