If the mayor's brother was given a no-bid contract to be appointed court jester or town drunk and given $368,000 for his services, the problem would become easier to see. Even if it was possibly the only such appointment in the world.
I know lots of people wouldn't think it's a problem and I'm an old curmudgeon. Lots of people are fine with low level corruption and poor practices that can lead to corruption or the appearance of corruption. I acknowledged that the very first thing I said, if that also wasn't clear.
[1] Sure its NZD but come on that's got to be at least 80 real dollars.
These things become problematic when no service is provided, or the quality of service is lower than you would have gotten otherwise.
Clearly service was provided for going on 20 years, so that’s just fact.
I also think that $18.000 NZD per year, for any local government, hell, even for a corner bakery, is a paltry amount. That’s below minimum wage anywhere that I know of.
No, they are a problem when the process is not transparent or fair and open to others and don't have some modicum of value for money estimations performed.
> I also think that $18.000 NZD per year, for any local government, hell, even for a corner bakery, is a paltry amount. That’s below minimum wage anywhere that I know of.
I don't know what that has to do with how "fair" the money for the service was. He was not an employee, he was not being paid a salary to do a full time job. He got $368,000 for... something. Continuing his public performances that he was doing anyway and would have continued to do. Doesn't sound like the local tax payer got anything at all out of it. The politicians bought themselves a publicity stunt.
By "real" you presumably mean "Bohemian":
Besides, he was providing somewhat of a public good in terms of tourism. It wasn't like he was just collecting a paycheck doing absolutely nothing. It doesn't appear he has any family or other business connections with that local government from a quick glance, so honestly his position seems about the same as any other local government employee. Is hiring a gardener giving an appearance of corruption as well?
Per year / 12 months gives per month of $1,533.
$1,533 wizard's monthly income / 395,000 population is ~0.0038810. I originally used a population of 390,000 which is ~0.0039308. I then just rounded to the nearest thousandth for the comment as I figured fractions of a penny that small are somewhat meaningless to my comment.