Tom's ongoing expense claim travails

The Telegram's ongoing investigation into spending at the House of Assembly turned up another tidbit on deputy premier Tom Rideout, right, in Sunday's edition.

That's right on the heels of another expense claim story the Telly ran on Saturday starring Rideout.

Between 2004 and the middle of 2006, Rideout claimed travel outside his district of Lewisporte mostly to the west coast and to Baie Verte. in itself, that isn't unusual.

Members of the legislature will travel to parts of the province than their constituency on legitimate constituency business from time to time.  Some will do it quite a bit for legitimate reasons.

There are a couple of odd things about the travel Rideout claimed:

1.   Distances/costs don't match:  Rideout has a pretty simple explanation and apparently a standard charge for travel on a circuit.  You can see it set out with the same destinations and the same totals.

-  Except that Rideout's explanation covers a total bill of 1,050 kilometres per trip not the 3,000 plus billed per trip.

-  Except too that the one charge where the route would have been longer, the total claimed was less. That's the one that included a side trip to Bay de Verde, not the usual Baie Verte. The trip still took Rideout to Corner Brook.

2.  Odd claims:  The one in April 2006 where the information doesn't seem to add up/match up to the claim.

3.  Trips to Baie Verte. It's more than a bit unusual that Rideout found so much constituency business in his old neck of the woods.  After all, the guy is from Fleur de Lys and represented the Baie Verte-White Bay district from 1975 to 1991. Odd that he'd find so many trips to the Baie Verte peninsula and - if the Telly actually got all the claims for the period between 2004 and 2007 - nowhere else.

Now this travel and housing situation is most emphatically not a case of Rideout having some sort of special arrangement just like one that supposedly applied to Oliver Langdon. That argument offered by Kevin Aylward's former executive assistant misses the substance of the matter in order to come to a convenient conclusion in one example, and to a simplistic view in the second kick at it; namely things are so much better now that there are rules for everyone to follow.

Things have changed from the way they used to be. Yes, the house management committee meets in public whereas the one didn't let cameras in the room.

But one would be naive in the extreme or engaged in an effort to mislead the public if one tried to argue that, for example, the members of the committee didn't come to agreements on issues facing the committee before they get to the meeting.  The three government members of the commission surely met privately in advance of the most recent meeting and came to an agreement on how to respond to opposition party demands for more resources.  How else can one explain the similarity in their responses? 

In this specific case, though we have something else. Rideout's housing expenses clearly flouted the rules, and yes, ladies and gentlemen, despite the efforts to say otherwise, there were rules and guidelines before 2007 for expenses in the House of Assembly.

Rideout knew the rules or ought to have known them. After all, he sat on the House management committee that set the rules.  He sat next to Kevin Aylward, incidentally, the year that the committee approved the infamous rules that blocked Beth Marshall from auditing the legislature's books.

Rideout's travel, though, is another matter.  The same rules that applied to Oliver Langdon and Tom Rideout applied to every member of the legislature equally, like say Kevin Aylward. If Oliver and Tom didn't have to submit detailed claims for travel, Kevin didn't either.  There were no special arrangements on travel, at least as they have come to light so far.

In general, we can establish that it was acceptable for members of the legislature to claim expenses for constituency work done outside the specific district the member represented. Yet there are some curiosities in the Rideout claims, some variance from what one would expect to see in the claims to warrant some further digging. 

If the travel claims were all that turned up on Rideout, then the people of Newfoundland and Labrador would have nothing much to ponder.  There are so many questionable expense claims, though - large donations using public cash, holding donations from one fiscal year to the other, donating half his expense amount in a given fiscal year, renting a house from his district association vice president  - to warrant a more thorough review. 
Incidentally, Rideout's bravado - of the "I marched right down there and sorted this arrangement out myself" variety - doesn't really wash, heck it raises even more concerns.

You see, not only is Rideout a former premier and former opposition leader, he is today the deputy premier and the government house leader.  By any estimate, he is the senior government official on the House management committee overseeing how the rules are to be implemented.  he holds some of the most powerful and influential positions in the legislature and in the administration.

The range of questionable claims coupled with Rideout's apparent indifference to how serious the issues involved are suggest that Rideout is not up to the demands of the jobs he holds.  At the very least, Rideout ought to step down - or be removed - until a more thorough review of the matter can be conducted by an impartial third party.

After all, how can he sit in judgment of others with so many questions swirling around his own actions?

-srbp-

The Telegram 
16 December 2007

Rideout defends travel claims
Deputy premier filed constituency charges outside home district

Jamie Baker; Rob Antle
Deputy premier Tom Rideout charged his taxpayer-funded constituency allowance with more than a dozen trips to the west coastin a 20-month period from 2004 to 2006, even though he represented the central Newfoundland district of Lewisporte at the time.
"My understanding of constituency allowance is that if I was invited to attend some function or be in some place as an MHA, then it didn't matter what district I represented - it would be a charge to my constituency allowance," Rideout told The Telegram.
"If I was invited to go to Baie Verte to take in their summer festival, if I chose to attend, that was a charge against the constituency allowance for Lewisporte."
At least eight of the trips took Rideout to Baie Verte, where he ran in the Oct. 9 provincial election.
Rideout stressed that there was no political aspect to those visits.
"Absolutely not. One was in October 2004 and I didn't run downthere until October 2007. (Then-Tory MHA) Paul Shelley was still the member when those expenses were charged, so I had no idea that Paul Shelley would have been resigning."
The MHA said there was no line on old expense claims for identifying the purpose of a trip.
After first being contacted by The Telegram, he matched up expense claims and his schedule. Rideout said he has explanationsfor all of the trips save two, but expects to have those shortly.
The purposes for those trips included:
Attending funerals;
Going to meetings in Corner Brook related to forestry matters,because the forestry office for the Lewisporte area is in Corner Brook;

Driving to Deer Lake from Lewisporte to catch flights to otherlocations for government business;
Some "co-mingling" of expenses with ministerial business. Rideout said he claimed mileage from Lewisporte and charged it to his constituency account and tagged airfare to ministerial meetings to his department's budget.
Rideout said he also attended Hockey Day in Canada in Stephenville on Jan. 7, 2006, because of local ties to the event.
The west coast trip claims abruptly stopped after Ed Byrne wasfired from cabinet in June 2006.
Byrne was the first casualty of Auditor General John Noseworthy's review of MHA constituency allowance spending.
But Rideout said there was no directive sent out to rein in out-of-district spending at the time.
"I don't recall that being the case," the deputy premier said."I don't think we were ever told that. I think that would be coincidental. I think in my case, you know, from the middle of 2006 on, if you were to look at my ministerial travel, I thinkyou would see I still had west coast travel but it would be easily defined as ministerial."
He cited an August aboriginal women's function as such an example.
Mileage claims
Most of Rideout's mileage claims were for set amounts that appeared to exceed the actual point-to-point distance.
For his west coast trips from the capital city, with a stop inhis district, Rideout generally claimed 3,086 kilometres - just about enough to drive from St. John's to Moncton, N.B., and back.
Rideout said most of his claims contained a good deal of "in-district" travel.
"I think I always put in a standard from St. John's to Lewisporte plus in-district travel of 1,050 kilometres," Rideout noted. "From St. John's to Lewisporte is about a four-hour drive (each way). In-district, if you're out there a few days, it's not much trouble to put a couple of hundred kilometres on goingfrom Lewisporte, Norris Arm, Birchy Bay to Boyd's Cove or whatever.
"The district one we used (was) pretty much a standard going back to 1999, and there was never any question by anybody who we submitted our claims to (at) the House of Assembly on that mileage standard."
On Saturday, The Telegram reported that Rideout spent $23,000 out of his constituency allowance to rent a house in Lewisporte from a local Tory party organizer for a 2-1/2 year period between late 2004 and early 2007.
House rules in effect at the time prohibited MHAs from charging taxpayers the cost of renting a home or apartment in their district - no matter who they rented it from.
Rideout justified the claims by saying his Lewisporte rental home contained an office - even though he also operated a rent-free constituency office in a government-owned building less than a kilometre down the road.
MHAs were permitted to claim a per diem of $53 without receipts for accommodations whenever they visited their constituency.
Rideout charged both - a monthly house rental of between $750 and $850, and $53 each day he stayed in Lewisporte.
He said he had permission to do so. But officials at the legislature told The Telegram they were unaware of the arrangement,and will address the issue with Rideout.
The Telegram obtained Rideout's constituency allowance claims for three fiscal years - 2004-05, 2005-06 and 2006-07 - under the province's access-to-information laws.
jbaker@thetelegram.com rantle@thetelegram.com
Box: TOM'S TRAVELS
Deputy Premier Tom Rideout represented the central Newfoundland district of Lewisporte between 1999 and October 2007.
But over a 20-month period - from October 2004 through June 2006 - Rideout charged his taxpayer-funded constituency allowance for more than a dozen trips to Corner Brook, Deer Lake and Baie Verte.
Those journeys took him hundreds of kilometres west of his district's boundaries.
Here is a listing of those trips:
Oct. 8-14, 2004 - 3,086 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Baie Verte-Lewisporte-St. John's, plus in-district travel. Mileage claim: $972.09.
Dec. 30, 2004 to Jan. 9, 2005 - 3,086 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Baie Verte-Lewisporte-St. John's, plus in-district travel. Mileage claim: $972.09.
March 23-31, 2005 - 3,086 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Baie Verte-Corner Brook-Baie Verte-Lewisporte, plus in-district travel. Mileage claim: $972.09.
May 26 to June 6, 2005 - 3,086 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Corner Brook-Baie Verte-Lewisporte-St. John's, plus in-district travel. Mileage claim: $972.09.
June 10-12, 2005 - 980 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Corner Brook,plus in-district travel. June 17-19, 2005 - 860 km. Corner Brook-Lewisporte-Corner Brook, plus in-district travel. June 28-29, 2005 - 980 km. Corner Brook-Lewisporte-St. John's, plus in-district travel. Total - 2,820 km. Mileage claim: $888.30.
July 7-26, 2005 - 3,086 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Grand-Falls-Windsor-Baie Verte-Corner Brook-St. John's, plus in-district travel. Total claim: $972.09.
Aug. 18-29, 2005 - 3,086 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Corner Brook-Baie Verte-Lewisporte-St. John's, plus in-district travel. Mileage claim: $972.09.
Oct. 4-10, 2005 - 2,465 km. St. John's-Bay de Verde-Lewisporte- Corner Brook-Lewisporte-St. John's, plus in-district travel.Mileage claim: $876.48.
Dec. 23, 2005 to Jan. 8, 2006 - 3,240 km. St. John's-Lewisporte-Corner Brook-Lewisporte-Baie Verte-Corner Brook-Stephenville-Corner Brook-Lewisporte-St. John's. Mileage claim: $1,098.36.
Jan. 1-2, 2006 - flight from Deer Lake-St. John's-Deer Lake toattend a funeral. Total claim: $618.87.
April 12, 2006 - flight from St. John's to Deer Lake. Airfare travel claim: $423.97. Avis car rental, April 12-14, 2006. Total distance driven: 496 km. Rental claim: $148.04. This distance is not enough to take him to his district and back; there were also claims for a CanadianTire gas bar in Corner Brook, and the Baie Vista Inn in Baie Verte during the same time frame.
May 4-7, 2006 - flight from St. John's to Deer Lake to St. John's. 
Airfare travel claim: $847.95. Avis car rental, May 4-7. Totalkilometres driven, 360 km. Rental claim: $222.07. This was notfor travel to his district; there is also a Holiday Inn chargein Stephenville for May 5-6. Hotel claim: $227.70.
June 1, 2006 - flight from St. John's to Deer Lake. June 7, 2006 - flight from Gander to St. John's. Airfare travel claim: $729.01. Avis car rental, Deer Lake to Gander. Rental cost: $675.41. Rideout also spent time in Corner Brook on this trip; there is a Canadian Tire gas bar receipt included in this time frame, although the exact date is illegible.
June 16-19, 2006 - Avis car rental, Deer Lake. 1,011 km. Rental cost: $222.07.
On June 21, 2006, Premier Danny Williams turfed Natural Resources Minister Ed Byrne from cabinet after the auditor general questioned Byrne's constituency claims.
There is only one subsequent claim made by Rideout for travel to or from the west coast - a July 6, 2006 flight to St. John's from Deer Lake for an emergency meeting of the Internal Economy Commission. That travel claim was specifically approved bythen-House Speaker Harvey Hodder.
Source: House of Assembly constituency allowance claims filed by MHA 
Tom Rideout for fiscal years 2004-05, 2005-06 and 2006-07.

Be it ever so humble...

... there's no place like the home office, apparently, for deputy premier Tom Rideout, right.

An investigation by The Telegram revealed that Rideout claimed rental for a house in his constituency of Lewisporte and an additional claim for accommodations while in the district between 2004 and 2007. The story, which appeared in the Saturday edition of the St. John's daily, is not available online. A copy is reproduced below.

Rideout, whose 43-day term as premier was ended by the Liberal victory in the 1989 general election, rented the house from the vice-president of his district association.

Asked about the appropriateness of renting from his party's district vice-president, Rideout said he was not aware of Freake's position in the party.

"I don't know if was or if he wasn't (vice-president)," Rideout said. "I couldn't say."

Rex Freake is, in fact, listed as vice-president of the Lewisporte PC district association in the party's 2005 convention booklet - next to a large photo of Rideout.

During the same time period, Rideout operated a rent-free constituency office in a nearby government office building. At the time, House of Assembly rules prohibited members from charging taxpayers for the cost of renting a home or apratment in the constituency.

This is not the first controversy for Rideout related to the constituency spending scandal.

In June, 2007, Bond Papers revealed that key provisions of new legislation designed correct excesses revealed by the House spending scandal would not take effect until after the provincial election in October, despite comments from members of the legislature suggesting the entire Act had come into force in June. Rideout, who was a member of the Internal Economy Commission that barred the auditor general from reviewing the legislature's accounts in 2000, turned time and the English language in knots attempting to excuse the political misdirection:

Since Green didn't say the act comes into effect today, we, in consultation with him, said what can come into effect today comes into effect today, what needs time to come into effect tomorrow comes into effect tomorrow, and tomorrow is Oct. 9, 2007.

He said that in June.

In August, the Telegram reported that Rideout had made a $5,000 donation to a charity in his constituency, long after the controversy over the issue had surfaced. The donation was delivered in Fiscal year 2007 but had actually been held over from the previous fiscal year. The Telegram reported that Rideout used upwards of half of his constituency allowance in 2006 for donations of various kinds in his district.

-srbp-

The Telegram 

15 Dec 07


Rideout rental raises issues
Deputy premier claimed house rent, plus per diems

Rob Antle; Jamie Baker

Deputy premier Tom Rideout claimed more than $23,000 for "rental
accommodations" in his district of Lewisporte from late 2004 to early
2007, while tacking on an additional $53 per day for accommodations
whenever he stayed in the area.

Rideout acknowledged Friday he spent the $23,000 out of his
constituency allowance to rent a house in Lewisporte.

The landlord who received the cash was a key local Progressive
Conservative party organizer.

House rules in effect at the time barred MHAs from charging taxpayers
the cost of renting a home or apartment in their district - no matter
who they rented it from.

Rideout justified the claims by saying that his Lewisporte rental home
contained an office - even though he also operated a rent-free
constituency office in a government-owned building less than a
kilometre down the road.

MHAs were permitted to claim a per diem of $53 without receipts for
accommodations whenever they visited their constituency.

Rideout charged both - a monthly house rental of between $750 and $850,
and $53 each day he stayed in Lewisporte.

That amounted to a minimum of 123 per-diem claims from the fiscal
period of 2004-05 through 2006-07 alone. The MHA pocketed more than
$6,500 in per-diem claims for accommodations in Lewisporte during those
three years, while also charging taxpayers separately for his
Lewisporte house rental.

Arrangement approved

Rideout said the arrangement was approved by the House of Assembly.

"Before I rented property in Lewisporte, I went and sat down with the
staff at the House of Assembly, told them my situation, that I didn't
live in the district," Rideout told The Telegram on Friday.

"I was told I could rent a place that I could use as an office - with a
room in it to sleep in, that's fine too - and that rental would be
covered, and there was a per diem that goes with your travel. You
submitted that as part of your claim too. I went and sat down eyeball
to eyeball, face to face. I never sent an assistant to do it, I went
and did it myself."

Rideout said he met with House staff at the time, but didn't identify
who they were.

But officials at the legislature said Friday they were unaware Rideout
was living at the Lewisporte location he was claiming as his office,
until contacted by The Telegram.

In fact, Rideout's situation appeared to be unique, said William
MacKenzie, clerk of the House of Assembly.

"Office expenses were certainly eligible under the old rules,"
MacKenzie said. "I'm not aware of other instances where the office was
also used for personal accommodations."

MacKenzie said House officials would now review the matter with Rideout.

He suggested the per-diem claims by Rideout for accommodations may not
fall "within the spirit of those rules" in effect at the time.

"If the rental costs that the House was reimbursing for the office also
included private accommodations, it doesn't appear that the per diem
should have been claimed," MacKenzie said.

Under the old expense regime, MHAs could claim $53 without receipts for
accommodations away from their home or other residence. They could file
receipts for amounts greater than $53 - hotel bills, for example.

Rideout paid landlord Rex Freake - a two-time failed Tory candidate and
longtime party supporter - $750 a month for rental accommodations from
October 2004 through December 2005, according to constituency claims
filed by the MHA and obtained by The Telegram under the province's open-
records laws.

The monthly rent payment rose to $800 in January 2006, and again to
$850 in January 2007.

There are 30 monthly claims for rental charges from Freake over the
three fiscal years 2004-05 through 2006-07.

The claims totalled more than $23,000.

Rideout served as Lewisporte MHA from 1999 through October 2007, before
running successfully in Baie Verte-Springdale. The constituency
documents obtained by The Telegram only cover the three fiscal years
from April 2004 through March 2007.

Asked about the appropriateness of renting from his party's district
vice-president, Rideout said he was not aware of Freake's position in
the party.

"I don't know if was or if he wasn't (vice-president)," Rideout
said. "I couldn't say."

Rex Freake is, in fact, listed as vice-president of the Lewisporte PC
district association in the party's 2005 convention booklet - next to a
large photo of Rideout.

Freake is also a party fundraiser in the district. Wade Verge, the
newly-elected Tory MHA for Lewisporte, publicly thanked Freake for
helping with his October election victory. "This couldn't have been
done without fundraisers Don Manuel and Rex Freake as well as all the
financial supporters, poll captions, inside agents and the voters,"
Verge said in the Oct. 17 edition of the Lewisporte Pilot.

Rideout said he previously rented a basement apartment and another home
in Lewisporte before beginning his rental arrangement with Freake in
2004.

Freake could not be immediately reached for comment Friday. The
provincial PC office did not respond to phone calls inquiring about his
current status in the party.

Rideout said his constituency assistant operated out of a nearby
Department of Transportation office from 2004 to 2007.

The MHA said he did constituency work out of an office in his rental
home.

"I still continued to rent and I used part of the house as an office,
part of it to hang my hat in," Rideout said.

He said he is now looking for an office to rent in Baie Verte.

Oram and Williams give wildly contradictory accounts of Lewisporte decision

As a sharp-eared reader picked up, the raw video of the Premier’s scrum revealed that Lewisporte MHA Wade Verge knew about cuts to health service in his district some time before July 9, 2009.

That’s the day Premier Danny Williams shuffled Ross Wiseman out of health and moved Paul Oram in.

The decision wasn’t announced until August 31, almost two months later.  And even then, some people claim,  the wording of the news release didn’t make plain what was happening in the affected communities.

The regional health authorities involved didn’t hear about the changes until the morning they were announced.

But even that is now at odds with comments by health minister Paul Oram.  Under questioning in the House of Assembly on Wednesday, Oram said the decision was made after a trip he made to the region to discuss the issue with local officials:

The fact is that this decision was made during discussions, Mr. Speaker, with Central Health and Community Services, also with discussions that we had ongoing with the community. The fact of the matter is, we went out to Lewisporte, and we told them very clearly that this facility would not be built or put inside of the new facility. We would not have X-ray and lab inside of the new facility. That is exactly what we told them, Mr. Speaker. They understood where we were coming from and we moved forward on that basis.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister: Isn’t it true that you told the people in Lewisporte at that time that there would not be a one-roof concept for lab and X-ray services, but you did not tell them you were prepared to gut their service within two weeks, did you?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. ORAM: Mr. Speaker, I said exactly what I said, and that was that there would be no laboratory and X-ray services under the one roof in the new facility that we were building in Lewisporte. In terms of –

MS JONES: (Inaudible).

MR. ORAM: - if she would let me answer. In terms of a discussion around what was happening with closing out the lab and X-ray part of what we were doing in Lewisporte, that discussion was had but there was no final decision made on that when I was out in Lewisporte.

Either the Premier has his story shagged up or Oram does.

Which is it?

 

-srbp-

Way less for way more in Lewisporte

While everyone is talking about the removal of laboratory and x-ray services from Lewisporte, a much larger cut seems to have escaped public attention.

The proposed redevelopment of the chronic care centre at North haven Manor was supposed to include acute care facilities as well.  The original budgeted cost was $20 million.

When people started to complain about the lab and x-ray business, the initial government response from no less a personage than the local member of the legislature was that people should be mindful of the $30 million health centre that was coming to town.

Now a 50% cost over-run sounded bad enough, the more accurate version of the whole story is found in the local newspaper – the Lewisporte Packet – from August 12.

Turns out that the original concept had ballooned in cost to $42 million.  Not so much as a single shovel had been soiled by local mud and the thing had jumped 110% in cost.  The provincial government’s response was to hack out most if not all of the acute care facilities, bringing the cost down to the low 30s.

"The one-roof health facility project was estimated to be around $20 million. It escalated to be about $40 million, in fact over $40 million," Mr. Oram explained. "As a government we had to look at where our priorities lie and we had to prioritize based on the identified needs.

"The project is still going to be - from our estimates - around $30 million for North Haven Manor and some other components as well. There's no way to keep it under $30 million to do what we want to do there and to meet the needs that we see as being in the Lewisporte area - this is the amount of money we are going to have to spend to do it."

The slash to laboratory and x-ray facilities was on top of that $12 million cut.

If all that weren’t bad enough,  the story is already widening.

Health minister Paul Oram is taking it in the head for the way the information on the x-ray and lab changes was released in the first place, let alone the way the new information flopped out last Friday.

The letters released last Friday have given risen to concerns in other communities that cuts are coming there as well. But even in trying to allay concerns, the health minister just made matters worse:  all health regions were asked to identify cuts, according to Oram. 

Now what he said is absolutely true but in the context, he is only adding gasoline to his own backside.  In his initial bluster, Oram stated clearly that further changes – always read as cuts – are coming.

-srbp-

Related:  “Much less for may more for St. Anthony”

It's never the principle.

It's always the money.

Beleaguered deputy premier Tom Rideout will be reimbursing the people of Newfoundland and Labrador for money he received which he wasn't entitled to, according to The Telegram.

The St. John's daily revealed last month that the former premier and current deputy premier and fisheries minister:

claimed more than $23,000 for “rental accommodations” in his district of Lewisporte from late 2004 to early 2007, while tacking on an additional $53 per day for accommodations whenever he stayed in the area.

Rideout acknowledged spending the $23,000 out of his constituency allowance to rent a house in Lewisporte.

The landlord who received the cash was a key local Progressive Conservative party organizer.

House rules in effect at the time barred MHAs from charging taxpayers the cost of renting a home or apartment in their district — no matter who they rented it from.

Rideout justified the claims by saying that his Lewisporte rental home contained an office — even though he also operated a rent-free constituency office in a government-owned building less than a kilometre down the road.

MHAs were permitted to claim a per diem of $53 without receipts for accommodations whenever they visited their constituency.

Rideout charged both — a monthly house rental of between $750 and $850, and $53 each day he stayed in Lewisporte.

That means Rideout could be forking out the better part of 30 large, given that the per diem claims for accommodations came to about $6,500 according to the Telly reports.

Repaying the cash once caught seems to be the standard approach taken by politicians in the province these days, as if the numerous questions raised by Rideout's actions in this case weren't cause for having him removed from office.

The same approach has been applied to members of the legislature - Rideout included - who pocketed a bonus payment in 2004 yet never told the public about it at the time. The Premier, for his part, knew about and tacitly approved the payment to members of the House even though he himself didn't accept the cash.

The whole sorry mess - in which everything is supposedly made right if the cash gets paid back, but only after one gets caught -  may work for some people but it's an ethically unsound way to run a province.

-srbp-

Questions in search of answers

Just a few observations on announcements from the province’s health ministry lately.

1.  labradore points out that others – like the local news media -  are noticing the odd but telling similarity between the Lewisporte cuts announcement and the one from Eastern Health about breast cancer back in April.

So much for the story then and now that it was all up to the local health authority.

2.  During Cameron, every senior government witness insisted that all the decisions were made by the people at the health authority because that’s what they do; ministers of health and cabinet did not get involved in operational issues.

Like say, deciding whether to shut down laboratory and x-ray services.

Who decided on an operational issue in the Lewisporte case?

Hint:  it wasn’t the regional health authorities.  They found out about the cut the morning it was announced.

3.  And how many times will a cabinet minister refer to the recommendations of the Cameron Inquiry in trying to justify the operational decision made in Lewisporte?

4.  Then there’s the claim by no less a personage than the Premier that the cuts came from the health authorities and that it was aimed at improving the system.

He claims the health authority made a recommendation “to us” for services that should be cut.

He leaves out the important bit, of course, that the health authority didn’t come up with this idea on their own.   They suggested cuts  only when prompted by a request from the health department to suggest cuts in the first place.

And the cuts had nothing to do with either offsetting the cost of the health centre in Lewisporte (as the Friday release claims) or “improving” the system.

That’s plain from the letters released by government late on Friday.

But don’t take my word for it:  Read them for yourself.

5.  And since we are in the questioning mood:  why would a provincial government that is evidently flush with billions in loose change ask for recommendations on what to cut from health budgets in the first place, especially when the sum finally settled on by  - whom?  cabinet, the Premier, definitely Paul Oram – was such a measly, miserable amount?

And that’s based on nothing more than the general political principle that you just don’t go out and randomly shoot off a body part when you don’t need to. 

Cuts make people upset.

Cuts to health care make lots of people really upset.

Burn ‘em at the stake kinda upset.

And they don’t get un-upset easily.

Un-upsetting them will be costly either in blood and/or treasure:  cash or in political strips taken off someone’s hide.

Therefore, as the political wisdom would suggest:  do NOT cut health care unless it is absolutely necessary.

So why in the name of all that is political and therefore unholy would any cabinet in its right mind ask health regions to recommend a list of slashes, some of them valued at upwards of a million bucks.

6.   When did they make the decisions?  Observers of government will note the date on the letters released on Friday is from early 2009, well into the budget cycle and long after decisions would normally be made.  People will start asking hard questions about when all this was decided. Evidently it wasn’t in August.

7.  There is no plan. And when all that is done, ask yourself why a government department would release letters that show their initial talking points were more composed at the Mad hatter’s tea party?

Usually you release evidence that backs your claim, not further hints that – contrary to the Premier’s claims at the bored of trayed last week - people in the departments of government have no idea what they are doing.

-srbp-

Rideout defends 5K gift of public cash

No surprise.

Deputy premier Tom Rideout thinks it's just fine to hand out gifts of public money to groups in the province from money set aside originally in 1989 to run his district office.

As Jamie Baker reported in Thursday's Telegram, since the rules allowed it, Rideout thinks the whole idea is just tickety-boo.

Some observations:

• According to Baker's story, Rideout gave away almost half his constituency allowance in 2006 to things other that constituency operating expenses like travel and meals.
• The $5,000 donation Rideout handed out in this case is more than double a previous gift using taxpayers' money. Rideout notes he handed the $2500 secret payment in 2004 to Calypso.
• While the gift of public money was made to the Calpyso Foundation on May 11, Hodder indicates the cheque for it was cut sometime before March 31, 2007.
  
• There is no explanation for the time-lag or why the donation was connected to the auction held in May. As the Pilot reported: "When you factor in a $5,000 donation that MHA for the Lewisporte District Tom Rideout made from his constituency allowance during the auction, the grand total hit the $22,000 mark." [Emphasis added]
• Speaker Harvey Hodder is quoted as saying "Mr. Rideout is in total compliance with the rules as they then existed."
• However, the rules under which Rideout made the gift are still in place and will be in place until October 9, 2007.
• Hodder doesn't explain how the existing rules were met, though, given that in February 2007, [see second story below] news media reported spending in the House of Assembly would be handled on a new basis, or as Hodder said at the time "[t]he old regime changed." Presumably that meant a(n) MHA could only spend a portion of his or her allowance each month. For Rideout, with an allowance of about $41,000, a monthly pro-rated amount would be $3417, considerable less than he spent in that single donation and not including whatever other spending he carried out at the end of the old fiscal year.
• Chief Justice Derek Green was sharply critical of the practice of making donations from public funds and recommended the practice be banned. It will be banned, but only after the election.
• Since the old rules are still in place, it is unclear whether gifts such as the one Rideout made and the practice followed previously of MHAs spending most or all of their yearly allowance in the months prior to an election can continue and is continuing until October 9, 2007. There is no requirement for public disclosure of MHA spending and it is unclear whether the access to information provisions of Chief Justice Green's report will apply retroactively once they come into effect on October 9.
  

-srbp-

Two Telegram stories follow:

Calypso donation legitimate, Rideout says
Minister defends $5,000 donation to Lewisporte charity

Jamie Baker
The Telegram
Thursday, August 2, 2007, p. A3

Fisheries Minister Tom Rideout insists there was nothing wrong with a large donation he made from his constituency allowance to a charity in his district this past spring.

In March, Rideout, the Tory MHA for Lewisporte, turned over a cheque for $5,000 to the Calypso Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides training and employment support for people with developmental disabilities.

He said the money came from what was left over in his constituency allowance from the 2006-2007 fiscal year, which ended March 31.

"I checked with the House of Assembly staff and asked them if there was any change in the rules for donations at that point in time and there wasn't," Rideout told The Telegram. "I made a contribution out of the constituency allowance to Calypso, which I've done every year for many years, and made it known it was out of my constituency allowance and not out of my pocket."

Although the cheque was cut in March, the donation didn't become public knowledge until after the Calypso Foundation's "fantasy auction"in May. It was reported by the community newspaper in Lewisporte, The Pilot, and Rideout himself referenced it in the House of Assembly May 24.

"I told everybody there, it was their money and I was happy to make the contribution, on their behalf," Rideout said in the House at the time. "I do not think anybody there had any problem with the taxpayers' money being used for that."

House Speaker Harvey Hodder said the cheque from Rideout's constituency account to Calypso was dated March 30, 2007 - just a day before the end of the fiscal year when the remainder of whatever was left in Rideout's allowance would have been wiped from the ledger as the new fiscal year kicked in. While the cheque had to be cut before March 31 to come out of that year's allowance, Hodder explained the actual claim wouldn't have to be filed until some time in April.

"There's always a carry-over," Hodder said. "He would've had to have that money left in his account - there would be no extra money at all, not one nickel."

While MHA donations are often anywhere from $100 to $500, the $5,000 contribution from Rideout actually represented almost a quarter of the entire Calypso fantasy auction earnings, which came in at $22,000.

Hodder said there are no directives in place that limit how much an MHA can donate per charity.

"Mr. Rideout is in total compliance with the rules as they then existed," Hodder said.

In 2006-2007, Rideout had a total allowance of $41,300. According to Hodder, Rideout spent $3,020 on per diem meals, $2,633 on per diem accommodations, $15,300 on travel and $19,016 on "other" - which is where any donations would normally be listed. He left $1,332 untouched.

As for Calypso, Rideout said that's who also got the extra money he was granted the previous year.

"The year before that when we got the additional $2,500 that's where that went, to Calypso as well," Rideout said, indicating no receipt was required. As for the donation made in March "a receipt was required and it was provided and it was made known publicly," he said.

Meanwhile, all parties in the House of Assembly have publicly stated that constituency allowances will not be used to make donations from this point on in keeping with the "spirit and intent" of the recently released Green Report.

The report recommended, among other things, that the practice be discontinued. That recommendation will not become law until after the provincial election in October.

jbaker@thetelegram.com


Departing MHAs spent entire year's allotment

Rob Antle
The Telegram
Friday,February 2, 2007, p. A1

Departing and retiring MHAs may have served half a year in 2003, but they managed to spend most or all of their annual constituency allowances.

House of Assembly Speaker Harvey Hodder said they didn't break the regulations, because there weren't any.

"There were no rules that governed it," Hodder told The Telegram. "The access was not governed. The maximum was out there. It's not that people did it wrong. It's that there were no rules governing it whatsoever."

Hodder said only one departing MHA spent an equal amount of their constituency allowance compared to their time served - roughly 50 per cent of the total for 50 per cent of the year.

The rest of them spent a larger proportion.

"Some people who did not re-run in 2003 - they were only serving in the House for five months and a bit of that year - had actually spent 80 and 90 per cent of their constituency allowances," Hodder noted.

"There were no rules. They didn't do anything wrong - there were no rules governing it."

Hodder said that even MHAs who publicly announced in the spring that they would not run again spent the higher proportion.

The 2003-04 fiscal year began April 1. The election was called in late September, and held Oct. 21. The new government took office in early November. Newly elected MHAs received a constituency allotment pro-rated from the time they took office until the end of the fiscal year.

Hodder said a similar spending phenomenon won't happen in 2007, which also happens to be an election year.

"The old regime changed," he noted.

Auditor General John Noseworthy revealed this week that politicians secretly approved an extra $2,875 constituency payment in 2004. Forty-six of the 48 MHAs accepted the money, which required no receipts for approval.

The twice-delayed Green report on pay for provincial politicians is now set for release in mid-February. It is expected to make recommendations on constituency allowances, among other matters.

rantle@thetelegram.com

Massive cost overruns, delays now normal for provincial government?

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, you really didn’t hear very often about a provincial government construction project in Newfoundland and Labrador going for almost double the original cost estimate.

You’d hear stuff about other places, like say one involving a nuclear power plant in New Brunswick. Or there might be one involving transportation – always a rat’s nest of problems – like say the streetcar line in Toronto or another light rail one in Ottawa.

That was then, as they say.

This is now, where the provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador seems to have a huge problem with construction projects of all kinds.

The latest is the health centre in western Labrador.

Promised originally as a juicy bit of pork for the January 2007 by-election, the project seems stuck like an excavator in winter snow. Other than that, not much has happened.

Not much except watching the cost estimates balloon like an embolism.  According to The Aurora, what was once estimated to cost about $56 million is now estimated to be in the range of $90 million.

That number will get bigger almost certainly.  And at some point, as in Lewisporte and Flower’s Cove, there will have to be an intervention to reduce the sorts of health stuff that happens in the health care centre so that the construction costs don’t go completely off the charts.  

The Aurora report says provincial government officials put the cost spiral down to a construction boom in briefing notes prepared for health minister Jerome Kennedy last fall.

Okay.

Theoretically, that could be the case. There’s just so much construction going on in the province right now that everything is at a premium.  Boom times and all that.  At least, so the idea goes.

There are a couple of problems with that notion. 

First of all, this is a recession and Newfoundland and Labrador hasn’t escaped the recession at all.  Far from it.  Even the provincial government is forecast a huge drop in the value of goods and service sin the province.  Everything is down from oil to newsprint to minerals. 

And if you look around, like say in Alberta, you can see what happens in a recession.  Like most places in the developed world, and even in an Alberta which is still chugging along well ahead of other provinces in economic activity,  a recession in Alberta means costs are dropping. Businesses – like Total SA and Conoco  - are actually increasing their spending on oil sands development because of costs that are as much as 40% less than they were in 2008.

That Labrador health centre is already estimated to cost 40% more than first forecast, incidentally. That’s pretty much on par with what happened to the one in Lewisporte.

So it doesn’t really make a lot of sense – at first blush – that Newfoundland and Labrador in a recession would see costs go up while everywhere else – like Alberta – costs are dropping.

Second, the sort of delays and cost over-runs for the Labrador west hospital is typical of the pattern of delays on provincial government construction projects – upwards of three and four years in some cases – and massive cost over-runs (40% is the half of it) people in this province have seen for the past five or six years. It didn’t just start.  And it isn’t confined to hospitals.

On delays, we have things like a 2004 court security law that still isn’t in effect. There’s a 2006 law creating a health research ethics board that still isn’t in place.  From 2007, there’s a major piece of legal work and a centrepiece – supposedly – of the Tory big blue plan called the sustainable development act.  Three years and not so much as a peep.

Let us not forget three years on Grenfell to deliver nothing that couldn’t have been done without all the fuss and the promises when the idea was first announced.

Nor can we ignore the land claims deal with the Innu on the Lower Churchill that happened and then unhappened.  Now it roams the Earth periodically cropping up in some news story in which it claims to be alive.  The reality is that it is undead, trapped by internal political wrangles within the Innu community in a world between life and death.

In the background, there is the program review, a response to a supposed budget crisis in 2004 the premier gave to Ross Reid.  No one knows what happened to it.   similar initiative – a 2006 economic program review – likewise disappeared.  The guy looking after it went back to Memorial in 2008.  What is Doug House doing these days?

On the construction front, there are cases like the sports centre slash conference hall in St. Anthony that doubled in price before the provincial government cut the whole thing down to a size that would fit inside the ballooned budget.  Two years after it was first announced, there was much less for way more.

We also can’t forget the aquaculture centre in St. Alban’s.  Two years later the thing is just starting to get underway  - we were originally told it would actually be finished by now - for 71% more than the original estimate.

Ferries. Schools. Hospitals.  Roads. You name it and the thing has been announced - in some cases many, many times - the costs have skyrocketed and there’s not a sign of anything tangible.  As noted here last winter, about half the economic stimulus projects the provincial government announced consisted of projects that had been announced, some of them as long ago as 2005.

Massive cost overruns and inordinate delays seem to be the norm in the provincial government these days.

The interesting question is why that is so.

We can be pretty sure it doesn’t have anything to do with just the normal cost of doing business. The pattern started before costs really skyrocketed and it affects things besides construction work.

And it really doesn’t have anything to do with outdated ceremonies and rules.  One of the things Tory supporters in this province should point out is that all the time the current administration doesn’t spend in the legislature gives it more time to get things done.  These guys are much more efficient than other administrations, so the talking point would go. 

Notice that they don’t say that sort of thing, though.  Despite having a legislature that sits about half the number of days it sat two decades ago, the usual complaint lately is about all the distractions. 

Nor can there be any complaint about requirements to have the legislature approve things.  The Fishery Products Act amendments a couple of years ago gave cabinet the right to make decisions on its own without reference to the legislature ever again. That follows a pattern in other bills where the decision on when laws come into force is left entirely to cabinet. 

Call it a sort of low-rent rule by decree, the idea behind this approach is that things can be done more quickly if all it takes for is a cabinet conference call and then a quick printing of The Gazette. No messy debates in public.  No question period.  Just a nice clean agreement behind closed doors.  Job done.

Except it hasn’t seemed to work that way.

Now this is the sort of thing we old political science types call “interesting” or “curious”.  It goes to the heart of what we love:  how government works in practice. 

The theory is fine.  All the bumpf from the departmental bumpf factories keeps the news media full.  And some people think they can change the budget by going to a consultation session.  People who are genuinely interested in this sort of thing, though, love trying to figure out how things actually get done.

In the case of the current provincial administration, those types have got their work cut out for them.  The current crowd should be performing much more efficiently and effectively than they actually are.  Put another way, they should be accomplishing things on par with what - as their polls show -  people think they are doing.

So how come they aren’t?

-srbp-

Blooms and roses

News reports about a climb in the number of jobs across the country buried a key aspect of the story, as in this example from the Globe.

But there was a catch. Much of the private sector has yet to start hiring again. The job growth was due to 36,000 positions added in the public sector, while the private sector shed 17,100 jobs, in sectors such as transportation, professional services and accommodation. Private sector employment has dropped 3.9 per cent over the past year.

That was paragraph four, long after the stuff about huge gains and ones bigger than expected.

Now this is a rather interesting revelation in light of economic developments in Newfoundland and Labrador.

You see the boom on the northeast Avalon isn’t being fuelled by the offshore.  It’s coming entirely from massive increases in public sector hiring, public sector wage increases and a huge jump in public sector spending.

The most recent round of ‘stimulus’ spending for capital works is just more cash in on top of the gigantic increases in public spending over the past four years. That would be the “unsustainable” ones for those who missed the drama of the past few weeks.

Incidentally, the guy who revelled in boosting spending beyond the levels that the economy could support is back in charge of the cash box.  He proudly noted for listeners of one local call-in show that the province currently outspends Alberta on a per person basis just as it has done for most of the past decade and a half.

Yet for all that, the province just shed 4200 full-time jobs between August and September 2009 and there are 3100 fewer full-times jobs this September compared to last.

All this should lead people to be a bit cautious about predicting the end of the recession and the quick return to happier times. 

Here in this province, the current provincial economy is sustained by huge levels of public sector spending.  But that just isn’t going to work given the anticipated drop in oil production over the next four years.  Even if the global economy rebounds, crude oil prices aren’t likely to hit levels double and triple what they are today:  that’s the sort of prices the provincial government would need to keep up its current spending.

No one should be surprised, therefore, that the premier and his new health minister – the guy who used to be finance minister – just headed out to a by-election and pulled a fast one on the locals.

Come help us figure out cuts to the building cost, they said, so you can keep lab and x-ray services.  What they didn’t point out is that the savings needed are not the $200,000 in annual operating costs but the millions in construction costs.

In Lewisporte, for example, estimated costs for the new combination seniors home and acute care clinic skyrocketed from $22 million to $42 million before they even got to thinking about putting the first shovel in the ground.  In order to contain costs, government scrapped the acute care bit for a saving of $10 million.

But do the math. 

In order to restore the acute care centre and its anticipated cost of $10 million, the locals in Lewisporte will have to cut out one third of the beds – at least – in the new chronic care centre in order to get laboratory and x-ray service back.

So where are those old people supposed to go?

That’s a very good question.

Too bad the current administration doesn’t have an answer even though the problem and a viable solution have been available  - but ignored - for over a decade.

-srbp-

Oram and Williams tell radically different versions of departure story

Even in Paul Oram’s political death, he and Danny Williams can’t get on the same page.

Asked about Oram’s resignation, Danny Williams told reporters that when it comes to an individual’s health and family, he doesn’t even try and convince someone to stay. “I just accept it,” said Williams.

But that’s not what Paul says.  As the Gander Beacon put it:

Mr. Oram said the premier asked whether he would consider staying on as an MHA, but he said he felt if he was going to walk away from one aspect of his work, he would prefer to fully remove himself from politics.

"I just felt that if I needed to regain control of my life, I had to walk away from politics altogether."

That’s not the first time that Oram and Williams have been at odds.

On the same day in early September – before Oram’s surprise resignation - Williams said the decision on  cutting lab and x-ray services was made months earlier, long before Oram became minister. 

Williams told a scrum that Lewisporte MHA Wade Verge knew of the cuts some time before July 9, 2009. Williams indicated Verge had the information from both Williams’ chief of staff and from Ross Wiseman when the latter was still health minister. 

Oram told the House of Assembly  - at almost the same time Williams was talking to reporters at another location - that he made the decision after meeting with concerned citizens in Lewisporte in mid-August. 

None of the dates match up since letters released by Oram in early September were part of the pre-budget process.  They were dated in February 2009.

But now even Danny Williams can’t get it straight.

According to the Northern Pen, the Beacon’s sister newspaper, a campaigning Danny Williams said something completely different from his earlier versions:

"Paul Oram had proceeded on the basis of recommendations made to him by the health authority," stated Premier Williams.

Not only did Oram now supposedly make a decisions Williams earlier attributed to someone else but the health authorities actually didn’t make the recommendations.  They were simply asked for options to save money, money that – as it turned out – they actually never had to save anyway.

No wonder some people don’t trust some politicians.

-srbp-

Eight candidates miss financial filing deadline; stats reports from elections office already received

 

Apparently, the statistical reports on by-elections held since 2003 have been submitted as required by law, contrary to earlier reports.

The financial reports are another story.

Your humble e-scribbler fired off an e-mail to both the House of Assembly and the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer a couple of weeks ago before labradore posted on the apparent absence of statistical reports on recent elections required by law and after a  Polemic and Paradox post on election financing. The response from both offices came back within 24 hours.

Bond Papers erroneously commented on the absence of the stats reports.

The details on the statistical reports are in the table below.  All reports are available through the legislative library at the House of Assembly.

Election	Date received by House of Assembly
Placentia and St. Mary's	31 August 2006
Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi	17 April 2007
Ferryland Kilbride Port au Port	12 July 2007
Humber Valley	12 July 2007

No word on the report for the Labrador West by-election but your humble e-scribbler will check that out.  Odds are the thing has been received given that the by-election took place in early 2007.

The general election report is now available online.  No indication if the elections office made the nine month deadline or were off by a couple of days.  The general election was held on October 9, 2007.

Eight candidates miss financial deadlines

In the official response to the e-mail,  the elections office noted that a change to the elections law in 2007 gave candidates a four month deadline to submit details of their election financing for the general election.  Before that, the time period was six months.

There is no statutory deadline  on when the elections office must report on the financing, but here the hang ups are not entirely the fault of the elections office.

The Labrador Party candidate from the Labrador West by-election had still not filed his return as of  July 11, 2008.  The by-election was held on March 13, 2007.

As of July 11, 2008, returns had also not been received from seven candidates in last October's general election.  These were the New Democratic Party candidates in Terra Nova, Lewisporte and Virginia Waters and the Liberal candidates in Port au Port, Lewisporte and The Straits and White Bay North.

The elections office intends to file an omnibus financial report this fall on the by-elections and general election.

Under section 330 of the Elections Act, 1991 willful or negligent failure to meet the financial filing deadline could make a candidate's chief financial officer liable to a fine of up to $50 for each day past the deadline before the report is received. 

There was no indication of whether the elections office will assess the penalties under s. 330 against any of the candidates who have missed the deadline for filing.

-srbp-

Uncomfortable thoughts

One of the little stories that seemed to sail past most people was a report that three of the province’s four regional health authorities will finish the year with balanced budgets.

"The light bill goes up, the phone bill goes up, the oil bill goes up — that type thing," said Western Health finance committee member Tom O'Brien. "We submitted that to the government and [government] approved our budget with those inflationary numbers in it. So we'll have a balanced budget for 2009-2010.

The only one that wouldn’t is Eastern Health but given some of the issues involved, that’s understandable.

But Labrador-Grenfell,  Western and Central expect to balance their books by year end.

Last spring, Labrador-Grenfell Health estimated it would end its fiscal year with a $2-million deficit, but officials said Wednesday that's no longer the case.

"We have had a greater success in recruiting staff, with a greater number of nurses on staff that actually cuts down on our cost of providing services," CEO Boyd Rowe said. "When we don't have adequate numbers of staff, we end up paying a considerable amount of overtime."

How odd then that earlier this month health minister Paul Oram announced that government had decided to cut laboratory and x-ray service in Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte. he claimed the government needed to save money and that the cuts had been recommended by the health authorities involved.

Sure those two ideas were among dozens tossed out by all four regional health authorities back in February as possible cuts when they were asked  - hypothetically – what they could do to balance their budgets if they got funding frozen at 2008 levels.

But if the books are balanced the cuts weren’t necessary.

And if there was a problem with the government health budget generally, then surely it would have made more sense to do some serious thinking and announce a wide range of options with the new budget in the spring.  There was no rush to chop in September if things were okay and certainly there’d be no reason to cut only two.

That’s what one would expect from a government that generally practices sound financial management based on a genuinely strategic approach. That was the logical implication when Oram acknowledged what many have known for some time, namely that the current administration has been spending wildly, spending public money in a way that – in Oram’s word was “unsustainable.”

Such a government would not engage in seemingly capricious, apparently ill-considered and curious, bizarre cuts that seem to bear no connection to anything. Heck they aren’t even connected to a review of laboratory and x-ray service which isn’t even completed yet.

Such decisions would seem driven by something other than sound reasoning, logic, and a firm grasp of the whole picture.  They’d seem panicky.  They’d seem irrational, perchance even stupid given the political fall-out that’s resulted across the northern coast of Newfoundland.

And it would seem even more irrational, capricious, certainly foolishly stubborn  and – yes maybe even stupid – to persist in the irrational and apparently unnecessary cuts on those two communities once the backlash started  and the overall financial picture was shown to be something other than dire.

Events of the past couple of weeks make you wonder what is really going on inside the provincial government.  What is the real story behind the Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte cuts.

Was there more to Trevor’s departure than meets the eye? Was there something to be found in his comment to Randy Simms the other morning that we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?  Taylor was known to speak bluntly and he certainly never spouted the “we are living in a bubble” rhetoric.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the good people of Newfoundland and Labrador would look on another administration and wonder what was going on.  Things sometimes didn’t make sense. 

The good people would stare in bewilderment since the leader was known to be a political mastermind.  Surely there had to be some Mensa answer they would rationalize, an idea incomprehensible to mere mortals as to why such bizarre things were occurring. 

Even went things looked insane they figured there had to be a plan behind it all. No one had to tell them that at a board of trade speech;  they knew it already.

Yet, despite their faith, they remained perplexed.

Uneasy.

Unsettled.

Disquieted.

Your humble e-scribbler would suggest to these people that they think about the issue again, and about their conclusion, with one tiny difference:

Merely look on events without the assumption that there was some inscrutable genius at work.

Then look again at the conclusion they reached.

Invariably, inevitably, predictably, at the point they reached a conclusion once again – devoid of the assumed secret and unknown brilliance – their faces turned ashen.

And they would go very quiet.

Quiet isn’t a word you’d use these days in some parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, is it?  Places where the Great Tory Revolution supposedly started.

That must be a very uncomfortable thought for some people.

-srbp-

“Old money” from Williams cabinet called “stimulus”

Danny Williams may not like it when federal cabinet ministers recycle announcements, but of  the 52 specific projects listed in the provincial government “economic stimulus” update news release issued on Thursday, almost half - 21 projects - were already announced, some as long ago as 2005. 

Some of the recycled old news slipped out earlier but the announcement on Thursday made the whole thing plain.

The Corner Brook long-term care facility project listed among the stimulus projects has been underway since March 2005. The Corner Brook court house, health facilities in Lewisporte and Labrador west  and renovations to the James Paton hospital in Gander date back to March 2006.

Many of those in the “old news” category were announced in 2007 in the Summer of Love spending commitment frenzy leading up to the last provincial general election. 

One project - the St. Alban’s aquaculture veterinary facility  - was announced in 2007 with a commitment the place would open in 2009.  Instead, the project has just been tendered.

There’s more to it than just the inclusion of old announcements that predate the ‘stimulus’ news conference pulled together as part of the February poll-goosing frenzy; some of the projects seem to include contributions of federal money as if the whole thing was provincial government spending.

The Torbay and CBS by-pass roads, for example, were announced in 2007 and 2008 respectively.  They’re cost-shared 50/50 with the federal government but the provincial news release shows the total cost without indicating it is only ponying up half the total. 

And while the Premier may sneer when his federal cousins announce announcements previously announced, that didn’t stop his own team from discussing projects, some of which have been included in as many as seven separate government news releases.

They are:

College of the North Atlantic campus, Labrador West:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five

Francophone school, HVGB:

• Un
• Deux
• Trois
• Quatre
• Cinq
• Six
• Sept

Port Hope Simpson school:

•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/exec/0420n04.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/exec/0420n04bk1.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0426n11.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0429n08.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0725n10.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/1121n02.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0904n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/laa/1120n04.htm

L’Anse au Loup:

•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/laa/0129n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0426n11.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0619n08.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0725n10.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/1121n02.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0429n08.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0904n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/laa/1120n04.htm

Labrador West hospital:

•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2006/exec/0313n02.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2006/laa/0330n014.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/tw/0212n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/exec/0420n04bk2.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/health/0426n14.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/health/0429n04.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/nr/0905n13.htm

Here’s the list of the 21 Old Announcements from the “stimulus” update:

• Corner Brook long-term care facility:  October 26, 2005
• Corner Brook court house:  March 2006
• Colonial Building redevelopment:  started before November 2006.
• Labrador west health centre:  March 13 2006
• Two new ferries:  2007
• College of the North Atlantic, Labrador West:  March 13, 2006
• Francophone school, Happy Valley-Goose Bay: April 2007
• New school for Port Hope Simpson:  April 2007
• New school, L'Anse au Loup:  January 2007
• St. Alban’s aquaculture veterinary facility:  Budget 2007
• New schools in Paradise:  August 2007
• CBS By-pass road:   January 2008, cost shared 50-50 with the federal government
• Torbay by-pass:  May 2007, cost shared 50-50 with the federal government
• Happy Valley Goose Bay long term care facility:  June 2007
• Hoyles Escasoni complex replacement:  October 2008
• Renovations to James Paton hospital, Gander:  March 2006.
• Lewisporte long term care facility:  March 2006
• New K-6 school for Torbay:  Summer 2007.
• New K-12 school in Baie Verte, Summer 2007.
• St Anthony School, Summer 2007
• Port Saunders School, Summer 2007

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Rideout misrepresents former cabinet colleague's remarks

Fish minister and deputy premier Tom Rideout must be having a bad day. 

Not only is he now on the hook repaying several thousands dollars of taxpayers cash he received but was not entitled to, but it turns out his rebuke of former cabinet colleague Loyola Sullivan is based on Rideout's misrepresentation of Sullivan's comments.

Here's Tom's version, as reproduced by CBC:

We were astounded and surprised at the view taken by [fisheries ambassador Loyola Sullivan] when he made the remark that we're 10 years too late for the fight," Rideout said in a statement, describing Sullivan's appearance at a Fur Institute of Canada meeting in St. John's earlier this week.

Here's the next bit of the CBC story, giving Sullivan's actual words.

However, Sullivan's precise comment while speaking with reporters was substantially different than Rideout's rendering of it.

"It's difficult because it's advanced so far," Sullivan said, describing the effectiveness of campaigns by groups protesting the seal hunt.

"I would love to have been in this position 10 years ago, to be able to advance it before it got such a foothold."

It's like the different between an office and a house.

Last month, The Telegram revealed that Rideout had claimed rent of a house in his constituency, even though House of Assembly rules at the time didn't allow members to claim rent or mortgage costs for property in the districts they represented.

Confronted with the claims totalling $23,000 over eight years, Rideout initially defended the expenses saying that he had permission from administrative staff at the legislature for the arrangement. On Friday, Rideout took a very different position:

"I have personally concluded that the way in which these residential expenses were billed to my constituency allowance was not appropriate," he said during a news conference.

"I take full responsibility for that and it is therefore my responsibility to ensure that it is rectified."

Rideout's initial defence started to come apart at the seams when he made incorrect statements on a local radio talk show.  As reported previously, Rideout said that he had only claimed per diems for meals and similar expenses.  Documents obtained by the Telegram showed Rideout claimed both per diems for meals as well as per diems for accommodations even though he was occupying a house and office already being paid for by taxpayers.

Rideout was a member of the House internal management committee at the time he began the expense claim arrangement.  During Rideout's term on the committee, it approved changes to legislation governing the House administration that led, in one instance to the auditor general be barred from auditing the legislature's own accounts. The period was well described by Chief Justice Derek Green in his recent report on the period.

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Related links:

"Beholder, beheld and beholden", a post that notes the curious change in perspective on the Rideout affair from a newbie local blogger once the Premier spoke on the subject:

If Deputy Premier Tom Rideout had permission from the House of Assembly, and thus a special arrangement, to claim for accommodations in Lewisporte, then what has he done wrong? The accommodations exist, permission was granted to claim a legitimate expense, and he has done nothing illegal.

Wonder what the view is now that even Rideout admits there was something wrong in the billing arrangement.

If only they’d read their briefing materials…

While health minister Jerome Kennedy busily backs off decisions he took only a few weeks ago on health care, there is something obviously haphazard and chaotic about the way the current administration is approaching virtually everything they do.

Your humble e-scribbler has noted this before in other policy areas. Equalization is the most obvious subject and, as it turned out, that was a post that was extremely popular.

But in the case of health care, word of the on-again and possibly off-again review of some services makes one want to turn back the clock to 2002.

That’s the year a provincial government with no cash to speak of - and certainly far less than the billion dollar surpluses Jerome! and his buddies have turned up – laid down a simple set of practical guides to health care delivery across the province.

Healthier Together (2002) was touted as a strategic health plan for Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s still available on the health department website. Read together Along with regional profiles produced the following year, you get a very good picture of the health issues in each part of the province and the solutions needed.

If you want to get a sense of how the document could help the government of today, take a look at the section on the organization of the health care regional authorities:

Newfoundland and Labrador is a large geographic area with a highly dispersed population where regions often have different circumstances and needs. This is partly the reason why the province has 14 health care boards.

It is not possible to compare the diversity of this province to the relative uniformity of Winnipeg or Edmonton, where populations which exceed that of Newfoundland and Labrador are serviced by a single health authority. However, if the number of health boards in this province create barriers to proper patient care, then re-examination is needed.

One of the problems both the Premier and the current health minister pointed to was a lack of accurate information they had when making decisions.

Well, the 2002 approach affirmed that decision-making authority on delivery of service belonged to the regions, not to people far removed from where the service was delivered. It also noted that the number of boards allowed gave a system that could take into account the local issues that could get lost in a larger system.

But when you turn to the section on where services would be located, there’s a simple model for health care that could work very easily today. After all, this thing was drafted only seven years and and, as it notes, the health care system currently in place goes back 20 and more years:

Primary health care sites will be the common denominator of service for the whole province. These sites will provide a cluster or network of basic services, plus public health and social services consistent with the mandates of the health and community service boards. Each site will serve a defined geographical region designed to ensure the right number of health professionals to service the population. For example, a minimum of five family physicians will be needed in a primary service site so that coverage can be provided 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. Therefore, a region should contain no less than 6,000 people and the site should be located so that 95 per cent of the population within that region are within 60 minutes driving time to the site. Depending on the geographic shape of a region or the remoteness of some communities, additional facilities may be located outside the main primary health care site to be serviced by a small complement of staff or by providers who make routine visits to the area.

Doesn’t that sound just a wee bit like Lewisporte?

All this makes you wonder if the turn-over at the senior levels in the current administration has served to rob the government of much-needed corporate memory, the kind of memory that would serve a cabinet well in tough economic times.

That turn-over didn’t come as a result of retirements and normal job changes-over. Rather there seems to be some other force at work producing a parade of ministers in some departments and the ping-ponging of others (finance and justice) while at the public service level there is an equally high level of change. All of it must surely make it very hard to implement a coherent and sustained set of policies over time.

And when people making decisions don’t have a clue about what happened relatively recently or when it is official policy to denigrate everything that occurred before October 2003, it makes the job of running government all that much more difficult.

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