As some or several Estonians meet to create a company, they will never start by thinking how much to pay the members of council. Any management structure will be a means to reach the goals set. At that, businesses come with the single-eyed devotion to make a profit.
Who wouldn’t get excited about salaries, but the best approach is thinking what we want people to do for the organisation. If we do not expect a thing, one cent would be one too many. The opposite is also true: should we expect diligent and devoted work, market price must be paid to the council member.
Commercial Code says that a «council plans a company’s operations and administrates its management while exercising oversight regarding activities of the board.» Ergo, council members need to be able to set strategic goals in the domain at hand, and provide essential assessment if the company is taking the best possible course towards the goal. Financial checks are to be ensured, and logical indeed it is to expect loyalty by all involved.
A state enterprise, in the eyes of the law, is no different. Here also, the council should be no place to be on welfare, not a seat to do one’s own thing – not for the good but rather the bad of said state enterprise. In reality, however, we are seeing all kinds of weird interests intertwined.
The list would be long, citing how parties have appointed council members with no practical or theoretical link to business management or the definite domain. The councils have been used as political substitute bench. When one is able to just sit in a council and pocked the couple of hundred euros – why have such councils?
Appointment of well-known entrepreneurs has been no ensured happiness either. Naturally, let’s not label all who ever sat at councils as naughty, for many have done a good job – and for no big bucks. Meanwhile, the conflicts of interests and suspicions are too many to talk about the «rare baddy».
A blanket ban on politicians in councils would be no essential answer. If even for the reason that then they could «place» someone standing for their interests whose background and links are more opaque yet.
What we need is a positive programme. Firstly, a clear wording what the state expects from its enterprises – why it owns them anyway. Secondly, that appointment into councils would be so transparent that anybody interested would easily understand the need for the person in the company concerned. Why not seek for council members via (international) competitions, just like board members and paid staff?