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And just how dramatic have the increases been?

As the accompanying chart shows, from 2003 to 2013 (the latest year of available data), Metro Vancouver municipalities collectively increased their spending on day-to-day operations by a total of 73%. TransLink’s spending growth was even more dramatic (at 105%), with spending more than doubling over the same period.

By comparison, the B.C. provincial government (43%) and federal government (46%) increased spending more modestly.

The increases in collective municipal and TransLink spending also greatly outpaced the combined rate of inflation and population growth in the region (31%). As a result, spending per Metro Vancouver resident has marched upward in real terms.

Importantly, this spending is largely to pay for day-to-day items such as wages and benefits for government employees and the costs of government administration — not capital projects such as roads and bridges, new transit lines, or more buses. (It includes debt interest payments for improved comparability between governments.)

Such spending increases do not always translate into new or improved services for Metro Vancouverites, especially if the spending is simply wasted or absorbed by government employees in the form of higher compensation packages.

In the case of TransLink, the compensation of employees consumed more than half (52%) of its operating budget in 2013. A recent report commissioned by the B.C. government found that, from 2001 to 2012, the wages of local government employees — including TransLink — grew by 38%. This rate of growth is twice that of their peers in the provincial government (19%). The report also noted that in a single year (2012) the number of TransLink employees making more than $100,000 increased by 14%.