IT MAY WELL BE that Orangeville Mayor Rob Adams deserves a 60-plus per cent pay raise and his colleagues on town council hikes of roughly 30 to 50 per cent, but surely the process that led to the huge increases was fatally flawed.

Mayor Adams says debate on the increases took place behind closed doors because the hikes were part of a package that included town employees. In our books, that's an excuse but not a valid reason.

As we see it, this Orangeville council is the most secretive of any the town has experienced in memory, with all serious debates on a subject taking place out of the public eye and open council sessions being essentially a rubber-stamping exercise.

Interestingly, this movement away from the Drew Brown era and its fractious council sessions running on well into the night comes in the wake of provincial legislation designed to make municipal councils more transparent and accountable.

Without a doubt, it was open to Council to have separate bylaws covering pay scales for town employees and council itself, and to debate the pros and cons of the council increases, as well as their timing, in public.

In our view, any increases in councillors' stipends beyond the current rate of inflation should not only be discussed in public but timed to take effect after the next municipal elections.

Were that to have been the case, the new pay scales for the Orangeville politicians would not take effect until after the next elections, which sadly won't be until November 2010.