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.
