A sound.

Could it be the chickens at long last coming home to roost and just in time for voting day?

It’s more than a decade now since that day in the dog days of the summer of ’01 when provincial politicians gave themselves platinum-plated kiss-off cash.

Every year as a legislature seatwarmer, they score three months pay when they hit the exit door.

One four-year stint and it’s a year’s pay at the end.

No maximum. Hang around and an MLA can walk away with hundreds of thousands.

Rise high enough and it’s seven-digits country.

It’s based on the highest three years on the taxpayer payroll. It’s not based on the base pay. It’s on all the coin scooped up from activities such as sitting on a committee and still breathing.

Quit. You get it. Fired. You get it.

At the time, only NDP leader Brian Mason voted No and called it shamelessly slurping from the trough.

By the way, the MLAs also score an RSP allowance. This year it’s $11,225.

Jack Major, retired Supreme Court justice, heads up the MLA pay and perks look-see.

The learned judge also ran the inquiry into the bombing of Air India Flight 182.

Major says he’ll try to have his report done by around April 1.

It looks like the results of the investigation into how much MLAs should get from taxpayers will land smack dab in the election campaign.

To come down when MLAs sit in the legislature, Major will have to be finished in March.

The opposition will no doubt torment the province to get the report out while politicians can chew on it and vote on it.

Whatever happens, Major says he thinks his recommendations should be debated.

“I’m under no illusion my report is just automatically going to be accepted,” he says.

In Calgary, Wildrose MLA Rob Anderson presents at Major’s public hearing and can’t wait for the chance to go toe-to-toe with those who like fat cash.

“Jeepers, these guys don’t look any more conservative than a 16-year-old with their parents’ credit card,” says Anderson of this province’s political establishment.

“I think Albertans are getting pretty sick and tired of their politicians looking like pigs at the trough.”

“The buck stops with the MLAs. We have to be accountable for our actions. Justice Major is going to make recommendations. That’s great.”

“But if MLAs want to take less and should take less they should be able to take less.”

Anderson says if Major’s recommendations up the pay and perks package of politicians Wildrose will vote against it.

In fact, the Wildrose want a rollback of the big pay hikes given behind closed doors in ’08 to cabinet and the premier.

They want a cut to the over-the-top sayonara loot Anderson calls “a taxpayer-funded winning lottery ticket.”

They want no pay hikes until the budget is back in the black and then it should increase only for inflation.

As for those saying more cash is needed to attract good people to politics. Of course, there’s no evidence more coin equals better leaders.

Just look at the current crew. There are a few gems but there’s plenty of fool’s gold.

“I didn’t get into it for the money. If you can’t live on a $120,000 a year don’t get into it,” says Anderson.

Herb Grubel was finance critic in the days of the old Reform party. He’s done some number crunching and the pay and perks are out of line with the rest of the west mostly because of all the exit dough.

David Carter, former speaker of the legislature, calls the MLA out-the-door payout “excessively rich” and slams the current Speaker Ken Kowalski who has been main man on the committee for pay and perks a very long time.

Speaking of the payouts and the deliberations of 2001, Carter, who calls Kowalski “the hitman for the Klein government,” says it was “a shell game.”

“I think if I looked in the dictionary I could probably find the word deceitful.” That hurts.

As for Major, he is “surprised” so many presenters want the tax-free portion of MLA pay to go since it would cost the province to top up salaries so the politicians would get the same take-home pay.

And more taxes would go to the feds.

But that old giveaway moolah at the end of the rainbow is the big talker with the public.

“That’s really sparked the interest,” says Major.

“They added up what it all came to.”

Yep. It’s taken more than a decade to hear those chickens but here they are.