Showing posts with label 1996 PC party election platform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1996 PC party election platform. Show all posts

06 January 2020

Patronage and pork #nlpoli


Think of it as classic political news in Newfoundland and Labrador.

VOCM headline: “Premier commits to fixing patronage issues in government”.

At the same time, some people in Western Labrador are  angry at the Premier for closing a small government office in Wabush.

In the VOCM news story, Premier Dwight Ball was referring to the controversy appointment he authorized at The Rooms. Many people consider that patronage because the person who got the appointment had previously been a political staffer in the Opposition office while Ball was Opposition leader.

What makes this a classic political story in Newfoundland and Labrador, though, is that no one sees the other job – the bureaucratic office in Labrador City – as patronage even though that’s what it is.

At the turn of the century, the provincial government relocated departments or bits of departments from St. John’s to other towns in Newfoundland and Labrador.  They called it “regionalization”.  The idea was to spread the “benefit” of government spending around the province instead of concentrating it in St. John’s.

We are not talking about putting a snow clearing depot for the west coast on the west coast.  We are talking about shifting the office of the fire commissioner with seven high paying jobs and putting them in Deer Lake, along with a bunch of people who run provincial parks. The aquaculture division of the fisheries department went to the coastal community of Grand Falls-Windsor, and the medical care commission offices – the folks who pay doctors for their services – went to GFW as well.

“You can do the work anywhere” was a common rationalization for the whole scheme and it certainly is true.  You *can* do these administrative jobs anywhere.  But it was more efficient in many cases to do them in St. John’s, which is, after all, the capital city and administrative centre of government. 

29 March 2010

“…Jobs that pay taxes, not depend on taxes…”

From the 1996 provincial election campaign, here are the provincial Conservative commitments on managing the provincial government’s finances.

Lynn Verge must be cringing at what Tom and the boys are doing especially with that bit about using policy to create private sector jobs instead of creating jobs that depend entirely on tax money

Mandatory sunset clauses turned up again in 2003 but there’s no sign the current crowd are going to give it another thought.

Balanced budgets have never been a goal of the current administration. In fact, the finance minister and the premier have explicitly rejected the idea.  When they had money they spent it and now that they don’t have money they are spending too.

 

A PC Government will:

  • balance the budget over four years, through a combination of measures to stimulate economic growth and re-order spending priorities. Deficits designed to protect funding for essential services in the lean years will be offset with planned surpluses in the growth years.
  • fix the rate of growth in borrowing below the rate of real growth in GDP, thus bringing down the debt-to-GDP ratio.
  • use tax policy to stimulate private sector job creation - jobs that pay taxes, not depend on taxes.
  • re-establish an Expenditure Review Committee to identify areas of inefficiency in government and take early and decisive action to eliminate inefficiencies.
  • set priorities for program delivery and reduce spending on expendable and low-priority programs. 
  • streamline and consolidate regulations to eliminate duplication and reduce the number of regulations and regulatory bodies.
  • put emphasis on patient care and high-quality education while seeking efficiencies.
  • impose mandatory sunset clauses on spending programs and regulations.
  • appoint a Public Service Pensions Task Force within 60 days to investigate ways to address existing liabilities while honouring our commitments.
  • reform the MHA pension plan to bring it more in line with those of public employees.
  • cut the number of seats in the House of Assembly to 40.

-srbp-