Speaker Harvey Hodder and members of the House of Assembly have been taking a hammering for weeks now for not releasing the details of how they spend their parliamentary budgets.
The politicians don't like it one bit, being accused of being unaccountable on the one hand and on the other hand actually hiding documents and other so they won't have to reveal who has been pocketing the public's cash.
The excuse offered was that the expense and travel claims might be involved in a police investigation ongoing into alleged overspending by four members. The Auditor General finished his work recently pronouncing everyone else to be clean for the period he audited. Basically the Speaker's legal advice about police investigations looked like a not-so-clever dodge.
So what did the Speaker do in the face of all that pressure?
He announced the auditor general is coming back to investigate all those files people want to see.
Yep. The Exorcist is heading back to confront the demons of impropriety possessing files and papers in the House of Assembly.
Oddly enough the files can't be made public while the AG is working them over...yet again. Hell, Noseworthy won't even let people being audited see which document he is talking about when he askes them to explain that document.
Oddly enough too, the AG is likely to emerge with little if any new information, the local high priest of the Church of the Balance Sheet can say he has exorcised them and they are free of taint.
Then Harvey can go back to withholding the documents but assuring people there was no information in them anyway.
Gee, Harve. What a clever way to hide documents while claiming to be open, transparent and accountable. I wonder who came up with that dodge.
