Taxpayer-funded golden parachutes ranging between $108,000 and $1.7 million have gone to former premier Dalton McGuinty, aides tainted by the gas plants scandal, and fired Ontario Power Generation executives.

The Queen’s Park payday was revealed Friday in the government’s annual “sunshine list” of 97,796 public servants — including 11,349 directly working for the provincial government — earning $100,000 and up last year.

McGuinty took $174,694 in severance and salary, while his former chief of staff David Livingston got $108,516 and his former deputy chief of staff Laura Miller $154,469.

Those payouts were dwarfed by the OPG severance cheques, with fired executive vice-president John Murphy getting $1.7 million, former chief financial office Donn Hanbidge in line for $1.4 million once his deal is finalized, and $265,000 for Lou Pollieri, chief audit executive.

The trio were casualties of a scathing auditor general’s report on OPG.

New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto-Danforth) said the payouts to ex-McGuinty staffers are “probably legally required but extraordinarily irritating.”

As for others departing the public payroll, Tabuns conceded that the government’s hands are likely tied.

“It depends on what their legal rights were and what the contracts were that were signed. If you have a bad CEO and you’ve got a contract that guarantees an extraordinarily beautiful golden parachute, you’re stuck.”

The sunshine list grew by 10 per cent from 2012, but the average salary is down ever so slightly, to $127,433 from $127,576 last year, the finance ministry said.

That tiny drop didn’t impress the Progressive Conservatives, who renewed their call for an across-the-board public sector wage freeze as the province struggles to eliminate a deficit of $11.7 billion.

“This government is out of control with keeping the budget down,” said Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton).

The list emerged as Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals recover from police allegations that Livingston is being investigated for breach of trust in the furor over cancelled power plants.

McGuinty’s payout follows a 23-year career at Queen’s Park that began when he was elected MPP for Ottawa South in 1990 and culminated with a 10-year stint as premier that ended last February. He resigned as an MPP last June.

Livingston, a former investment banker at the centre of the OPP probe, worked under McGuinty for nine months following an eight-year stint as chief executive of Infrastructure Ontario.

Livingston’s lawyer, Brian Gover, maintains Livingston has done nothing illegal as police continue to probe deleted emails and wiped computer drives from the premier’s office. The police allegations have not been proven in court.

Miller was McGuinty’s former deputy chief of staff for communications and strategy. OPP allege her boyfriend, Peter Faist, was given a special computer code, arranged by Livingston.

Dave Gene, McGuinty’s former deputy chief of staff for operations, left with $164,435 and is now working on the mayoralty campaign of Karen Stintz.

The three highly paid OPG execs were dismissed after the auditor general’s report, which found the Crown utility pays “very generous” wages and benefits, contributing to higher electricity bills.

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“People are justified in being angry at the performance that OPG put in, but legally it may be that we are stuck with those bills,” Tabuns added.

The biggest cheque goes to Murphy, the former executive vice-president of strategic initiatives, who gets $1.7 million after more than 33 years with the Crown utility and its predecessor company, Ontario Hydro.

Murphy is listed on the sunshine list with a salary of $903,970 last year plus $6,899 in taxable benefits.

The $1.7 million severance to Murphy is in the ballpark of the $1,714,000 salary paid to OPG chief executive Tom Mitchell last year, making him the highest paid public servant in Ontario.

Pollieri, who was a vice-president and chief audit executive at OPG, earned $295,100 last year, according to the sunshine list.

The third executive to lose his job, Hanbidge, has not yet reached a severance deal but OPG said his employment contract calls for 24 months “total compensation” if dismissed. He earned $664,974 last year after 14 years with the utility.

At Hydro One, chief executive Carmine Marcello, who is embroiled in a controversy over a widespread overbilling of customers now being investigated by Ontario ombudsman André Marin, made $724,916 last year.

The sunshine list shows two top executives from the customer service side at Hydro One made six-figure salaries last year before they parted ways with the transmission utility in February.

Rick Stevens, who retired as vice-president of customer services, earned $306,443 — up from $305,638 in 2012 — and customer-service director Mark Fukuzawa made $236,665, up from $204,370 the previous year.

Inflation is one reason why the sunshine list, initiated by former Conservative premier Mike Harris in 1996, has grown but the symbolic $100,000 threshold has been eroded and would be $141,000 now if it had been created today.

Successive governments, however, have refused to change the $100,000 mark out of concern the optics would be problematic.

At Queen’s Park on Friday, federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney said Ottawa, which does not do such detailed salary disclosure, instead publishes “salary ranges” of big earners out of respect for their privacy.

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