Saeimas committee rejects initiative to publish public sector salaries

The Public Administration and Local Government Committee of Latvia's parliament, the Saeima, rejected four collective initiatives affecting public sector employees. The most discussed was a proposal by the transparency watchdog Delna to publish the salaries of everyone working in the public sector. It had been signed by more than 10,000 Latvian citizens. A majority of deputies voted against it.

Delna's arguments

Agnija Birule, deputy director of Delna, urged the committee to support the initiative. She stressed that the argument about infringement of private rights is no justification, because the issue concerns the use of public funds, which is especially important when spending cuts are being discussed. The initiative appeared on the ManaBalss petition platform in 2019, and it took a long time to gather the required number of signatures.

Objections

Edvīns Danovskis, senior adviser at the Saeima's Legal Bureau, said broad transparency already exists for public officials: the law on preventing conflicts of interest in the activities of public officials makes declarations of income, property, loans and debts publicly available. In his view, publishing the pay of all employees would be a disproportionate restriction on private life and also a security threat, as it would make it easy to profile individuals. He recalled that in 2019 the Constitutional Court found provisions requiring the names, positions and pay of all staff to be published on institutions' websites incompatible with Article 96 of the Constitution (Satversme).

Jekaterina Macuka, director of the Data State Inspectorate, said mass publication must serve a specific purpose, which is currently lacking. She doubted that publishing salaries would increase trust in public administration and noted that data made public in 2018 can still be found on the Algas.lv portal, which the inspectorate has been unable to block. The State Security Service warned that unrestricted access to data would make officials more vulnerable to recruitment and intimidation. Diāna Stepiņa of the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) said the bureau is not against transparency, but the information is already in officials' declarations.

Deputy Andrejs Ceļapīters argued that taxpayers have a right to know how their money is spent and called the security argument a pretext. In his view, the armed forces and security structures could be an exception.

Other initiatives

The committee also rejected an initiative by Kārlis Avotiņš to ban officials from holding several paid posts in public institutions; Danovskis said existing law and control mechanisms already cover this. An initiative to suspend state funding for parties whose members act contrary to the Constitution was rejected too. The collective submission "Accountability of Public Officials to Society" will be referred to the Legal Affairs Committee for evaluation.