By Cheryl Rosebush
When amalgamation began, being “let go” looked good.
Or so it seemed for the top 72 public servants who got buyouts during Ottawa’s municipal amalgamation in 2000. Ranging from $100,000 to almost $600,000, and totalling close to $13.5 million, these controversial buyouts have opened doors for some of their recipients.
At the top of the buyout list is Mike Sheflin. He got $587,135 after the transition board terminated his contract as acting chief administrative officer of Ottawa-Carleton. This did not include what Sheflin will receive from his pension fund.
His last day at work was Dec. 31, 2000, marking the end of a 26-year career in regional government. Says Sheflin, 63, “There is life after municipal government.”
Sheflin says he spent the first six months of 2001 with his family. “I was offered some (consulting) jobs but didn’t want to go back to a life spent working… I was a workaholic.”
Since October 2001, Sheflin has volunteered with the National Guide to Sustainable Municipal Infrastructure, a Canada-wide group that recommends best practices for sustainable municipal infrastructure. Sheflin chairs its roads and sidewalks committee. When he’s not volunteering, Sheflin says he is available to advise on municipal infrastructure issues.
He also finds time to foster stray kittens for the Ottawa humane society with his wife, Anne.
Sheflin says life slowed down after his buyout, although he contends it didn’t change him. He and his wife have lived in the same 100-year-old, two-storey house in the Glebe for the last 27 years.
Slowing down also meant Sheflin could spend more time with his daughter, Siobhan, 24, who died of an asthma attack last summer. “Spending time with Siobhan was what I was meant to do,” says Sheflin.
Merv Beckstead is also on the list of top buyout recipients. He received $456,317 in addition to his pension. Beckstead, 61, ended a 40-year career in the public sector in November of 2000, after spending his last six months working for Ottawa’s transition board.
After his departure, Beckstead worked as a licensed advisor at Nesbitt Burns investment firm for the next year and a half.
Working on commission, Beckstead wouldn’t say how much his sales totalled but says, “Some people can do very well at it.”
In August, Beckstead became supervisor for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. Beckstead, who is charged with turning around Ottawa’s financially-troubled school board, will be paid $170,000 a year.
Eric McSweeney calls himself “number 22.” He had the twenty-second largest buyout, receiving $223,797 when he left the region’s alternative services department.
Three days later, McSweeney, in his late 40s, incorporated his own municipal management consulting company called McSweeney and Associates. His contracts routinely take him to central and eastern Europe.
Has his buyout improved his life? Says McSweeney, “Without the buyout, I couldn’t have made the leap without the bridge to get me there… I have a family to support.” McSweeney lives with his family in Barrhaven.
Merv Sabey, 55, received a $191,034 buyout after 21 years in the region’s social services department. Within two weeks, he established Clearview Consulting and stepped into a 14-month contract with the province of Ontario to create and manage a strategy for social assistance in northern Ontario.
Sabey says the “northern strategy” had a budget of $3.5 million, but did not want to say how much of that budget was earmarked for his consulting fees.
At a time when Sabey was ready for a new challenge, he says the buyout was “an important part of moving on with my life.” Sabey says he now has time to enjoy, “more skiing in the winter, more golf in the summer.” Since he left municipal government, Sabey and his wife have vacationed in Australia, Europe, Miami and New York. For Sheflin, Beckstead, McSweeney and Sabey, it would seem that generous buyouts made life after “being let go” look good.