Cabinet has decided to give Auditor General John Noseworthy double the staff so that he can conduct complete assessments of expense claims by every member of the legislature since 1989. The assessment will apparently be done before the general election in October.
Some are describing this as an extension of Noseworthy's mandate from cabinet from July 2006.
They are wrong.
Noseworthy was asked to assess claims to determine if their was overspending dating back to 1989.
He did that and found none.
The second phase of Noseworthy's mandate - at least according to the order-in-council issued last summer - was to conduct a comprehensive audit of the years from 1998 to the present. presumably that was to piece together the expense records for the entire legislature, given that the former financial director was fond of overwriting his spreadsheets.
Instead, Noseworthy is checking to see what members of the legislature claimed on their expense accounts. Premier Danny Williams says he wants the whole pile - over 120 current and former members - to be assessed so people can compare current sitting members of the legislature to those of the past.
This is a complete change of mandate, presumably with the full support of the cabinet. it's noticeable that the detail audit, which would have revealed far more about current members of the legislature on both sides of the House, has apparently been conveniently shelved.
Odd that Williams would do that.
Odd that is unless former members of the legislature, like say Danny Dumaresque, were planning to run again and Williams might be looking for more dirt to use during the campaign. He decries personal attacks when aimed at him, but loves to launch them against others.
Williams should release every single report, unedited to the public on every single expense by every single legislator.
That's the only way to be fair and non-partisan.
That way, we - the voters - can all see what happened.
Odds are though that Noseworthy will let the public see only measly dribs of information approved for disclosure and likely long after the information has been disclosed to cabinet.
Noseworthy's reports thus far have been grossly inadequate in virtually every respect. We should expect nothing better this time around.
Only full disclosure would be fair.
Anything else smells of dirty, old-fashioned partisan politics.
For some of us, the truly bizarre idea is that Williams would want to have himself compared to former members of the legislature.
For example, when it comes to accountability, transparency and accomplishment in a short time span compared to, say, a Premier 15 years ago, Danny Williams can be weighed, measured and found sadly wanting on every score.
Ditto for his deputy.