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. 

Political Foote Ball #nlpoli

Since 2003, the legislature has become more about political theatre than the public interest.  This past sitting of the House proves how much that is so.

Public discussion of policy issues in Newfoundland and Labrador takes place inside an echo chamber. It tends to stay inside arbitrary, artificial boundaries.  Participants  ride their hobby horses and ignore or try to shout down anything that contradicts their assumptions. often comments are not about what is actually going on.  They emphasise the trivial and superficial – the spats with Gerry Byrne and Tom Osborne – and ignore the  far more serious. Much of what they do is absurd:  they chase Chris Mitchelmore, knowing that Dwight Ball actually made the decision. 

Only the Premier can approve appointments
to the senior public service. 

You see them a lot.

New releases from the provincial government announcing changes to the senior public service in the province.  New people taking jobs.  People being moved from one job to another. A handful of retirements or people who left, implicitly to take up another job.

In October 2018, for example,  there was an announcement of a new appointment as associate secretary to cabinet for communications. There’s no mention of what happened to the person who used to have that job,  although the release for that earlier appointment came in January 2016.

The senior public service includes deputy ministers, associate and assistant deputy ministers, and executive directors.

There were 56 changes at that level in 2016, 60 in 2017, and only 16 in 2018. 

They don’t issue news releases for every one, any more.  Dwight Ball stopped announcing any appointments below the rank of deputy minister.  The high number of changes in the senior public service under Kathy Dunderdale became a major issue and an easy way to stop people finding out about the changes was to simply stop announcing some of them.

Fortunately for openness, transparency, and accountability, there’s a database online of orders-in-council that anyone can search.  Those are the legal documents that make each senior executive appointments official. 

Duff in the hole encore #nlpoli

Oh dear.

The CBC has gone off to the mainland to get Duff Conacher to make a comment about the need for political finance reform in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Three observations:

1.  There is a desperate need for campaign finance reform in Newfoundland and Labrador.  SRBP has been writing about it relentlessly for a dozen years.  By comparison, the conventional media simply couldn't be arsed to cover the subject more often than not.

When they did notice something was amiss, as in 2006,  they were inclined to follow the line set by the government-of-the-day rather than have a look at the facts for themselves. What they would have discovered in the massive patronage scheme that ran here between 1996 and 2006, for example, was that the the level of misuse of public funds went *up* after 2003.

And after that they'd have found all sorts of other odd things.  Donations by companies getting hefty contracts from government?  Absolutely, a problem. Tired of writing about it.  Finance minister and later premier Tom Marshall financed his entire election campaign in 2011 out of a series of seven cheques from construction companies all of which did work for the government as Marshall shovelled cash into capital works at an unprecedented - and unsustainable - rate.

But what about political donations by town councils and the police?  Or what about a politician who ran a charity while he was in office that was funded by his government salary)?

2,  Conacher knows shag-all about what is happening here, as some of his previous comments have shown.  That actually weakens the case for campaign finance reform here since he is going to miss more than he hits.

Duff's good for the penetrating insights into the obvious - we need reform because it lends itself to corruption - but as with the CBC story his ignorance of the particulars makes him look like a bit of a goof at best or a blind nob at worst.  You see, Duff's been stonily silent on far worse things between 2003 and 2015 than anything he said before 2003 or since 2015.

3.  Stunned as me arse or what?  You really have to shake your head in disbelief at Dwight Ball's comments in the CBC story.  His election platform included a promise to change the campaign finance laws.  Instead of playing that up, Ball goes on the defensive making he look like he opposes finance reform.

That's the kind of stuff that must leave everyone outside of the Premier's Office banging their heads on the wall in frustration.  Inside the office, it's likely high-fives all around as the boss nailed another one to the wall.

Nailed his thumb more like it.

-srbp-

Taxing our understanding #nlpoli

Over the past week, there's been a flurry of comment about gasoline prices and the fact that, as of New Year's Day, a  provincial sales tax now applies to books.  It's 10%, on top of the federal sales tax of five per cent.

All sorts of people are talking about these two things as if they are the most important things in the world and the most horrible things in the world.

Let's look at the book tax.

The Sunshine List Case hits the court #nlpoli

The public sector unions' attack on freedom of information is finally in front of a judge.  The unions want to  block disclosure of the names of public servants in response to a request from the Telegram's James McLeod for a list of public service positions in which the person holding the job makes more than $100,000 a year.

McLeod is compiling the list because both the former administration and the current one have committed to publishing one but haven't done so yet.  Several other provinces publish similar lists of public employees who make more than $100,000 a year.

The union's says it's okay to disclose the position title and income but McLeod shouldn't  have the name of the person holding the job.  It's a insane argument since there is no practical way to withhold either of the three elements of the request - name, position, salary - such that a person couldn't make up the list after a couple of requests. It's an insane argument from because the unions don't oppose disclosure of the name and position separately from the salary.  Well, at least they haven't objected so far.

But the position taken by the unions doesn't make sense for a bunch of other reasons.

Reforming the way government works #nlpoli

Conservative and New Democrat goons are fapping themselves into a frenzy on Twitter over Bern Coffey's appointment as Clerk of the Executive Council.  Qualifications don't matter, they would have it.  Bern Coffey's appointment is partisan just because Coffey is a Liberal and therefore it is bad.  No Liberals should be appointed to anything.

Derpy Conservative David Brazil dismissed Coffey in an interview with NTV News because Coffey has no connection to the provincial public service. He's an "outsider" supposedly. The facts are irrelevant: Coffey spent a couple of decades as a highly successful Crown prosecutor before he set out on his own about 16 years ago.

Dipper boss Earle McCurdy thinks Coffey is "lacking the right qualifications" although McCurdy had no idea what the right qualifications would be other than, say, not being Liberal.

For his part,  Premier Dwight Ball told NTV that Coffey's job will now involve "challenging" the province's public servants so that the government has the best information possible when making decisions.

Such is the shallow nature of provincial politics these days.  Even Dwight Ball's comments don't accurately reflect what is going on.

The development of our country #nlpoli

Today, the development of Churchill Falls is popularly perceived as a failure.  Newfoundland is portrayed as the victim of a shrewd and untrustworthy lot in Quebec.  They hoodwinked Joe Smallwood,  the Liberal premier of Newfoundland at the time, and have continued to steal from Newfoundlanders through the patently unfair 1969 power contract.

The Churchill Falls power plant cost a little over $1.0 billion (about $6.1 billion in 2015) to build between 1969 and 1971.  With an installed generating capacity of almost 6,000 megawatts,  it was one of the largest if not the largest hydroelectric plant in operation at the time.

Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation delivered the project on budget,  achieved initial operating capacity five months ahead of schedule and finished the whole project a year ahead of schedule.

Revenge for the humiliation of Churchill Falls remains at the centre of provincial politics, as it has since the late 1970s.  Redress of the grievance has been the most common term for the political goal of the Newfoundlanders, but as Danny Williams and the provincial Conservatives made it out in 2010, revenge was really their burning passion.  Muskrat Falls was not merely Williams' legacy.  It was the means by which Newfoundlanders would break what he called Quebec's stranglehold on his province's economic future in Labrador.

In this pair of posts, we will look first at Churchill Falls.  The second, coming tomorrow,  will look at the years since 1972, culminating in Muskrat Falls.

Message Control #nlpoli

Memorial University professor Alex Marland has a new book on the market.  Brand Command is about political communications.  Marland interviewed a lot of people and did a lot of research for this very big book that lots of people should read.

One of the big ideas in the book is that politicians these days are very keen on something called message control.  They have a fetish for consistency so that everyone is singing the same things from the same hymn book, as the metaphor goes. It's an old idea and there are many reasons why politicians like to be consistent.  For one thing,  repetition across many means of communication increases the likelihood the message gets through.

On another level, though,  consistent messaging means ultimately that actions match words.  The message of the words must match the message in the action that makes those words real.

In that sense,  message consistency is about credibility and values and trust. Politicians like to tell people what they believe in and  how they will make decisions. Voters don't spend a lot of time thinking about government so they want someone they can trust to make decisions they agree with or can generally trust are the right ones.  When political analysts talk about "connecting with voters"  that's what they are getting at. 

The real connection voters need to see is the one between the words used to make promises with the actions that follows.  That connection makes the words credible 0 literally, believable - the next time there are words about what the politician will do.

Anything that attacks a politician's credibility is bad and when - as in Ball's case - the wounds are all self-inflicted, then you know there is a huge problem.

So why did Dwight Ball fire John Ottenheimer?

Policy Stagnation #nlpoli

The provincial government has been on its current course since about 2007.  

There were three elements to the Conservatives agenda under Danny Williams.  They changed somewhat over time but these are the elements that dominated from 2003 to 2015.

Above all else, Williams’ goal was to build the Lower Churchill.  That was to be his one, lasting accomplishment.  Williams would build what no one else had been able to build.  While it was rationalised as a provincial project with lasting significance, the way it finally rolled out confirmed the extent to which the Lower Churchill was intensely personal.

To build the Lower Churchill, Williams would turn Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro into an energy corporation to rival Hydro-Quebec. And to help fund it, Williams would acquire so-called equity stakes in offshore projects.

Good-bye John #nlpoli

In their last year in office, the provincial Conservatives went on a patronage bend on top of the patronage bender they started in 2003.  They came into office promising reform and - you guessed it - did exactly the opposite.  If there is no greater fraud than a promise not kept, then then Old Man and his cronies were the biggest political fraudsters in the history of political fraud.

We told you about this last July when Paul Davis appointed political operative John Ottenheimer to replace political operative Len Simms as head of the provincial government's housing corporation. After the Ottenheimer appointment, Davis and the Conservatives kept going with the questionable appointments.  The swap of the chief judge in Provincial Court remains highly suspicious and unexplained, as does the sudden firing of the High Sheriff.  The former is one the new Liberal administration genuinely could not do anything about.  The former High Sheriff is now suing the provincial government for wrongful dismissal.

The Liberals could have and should have done something about all the others.  It was a way of setting a new tone for their administration and demonstrating that things that are wrong cannot stand.  For some unknown reason, Dwight Ball would not commit to reversing the Ottenheimer appointment  - on principle - when Davis made it a year ago. When he took office, Dwight Ball decided to leave not only Ottenheimer but all the other Conservatives appointees in place.  And when he unveiled the new appointments commission, Ball had a third opportunity to set a new standard for government appointments by getting rid of the old, wrong ones.

He didn't.

Now, Ball has punted John Ottenheimer.  We do not know why.  No one from the provincial government did any interviews. The minister responsible for the housing corporation issued a news release announcing Ottenheimer's replacement.  Everything else that we know - including the size of Ottenheimer's severance - came from Ottenheimer himself.

Responsible Government #nlpoli

Many of you may not have heard of Jerry Dean until this past week.

Jerry is from Botwood. Last fall the people on Exploits district elected him as their member in the House of Assembly.  He's been a around the block a bit.  His official biography says he worked for Abitibi for 30 years and since 1997 he's been active on his town council and in some volunteer groups.

Last week Jerry said something in the House of Assembly that got some folks upset on Twitter. That helped get him some media attention  - here's the TransCon and CBC versions - and so the fellow has been getting a bit of a rough ride.

Pressure #nlpoli

A curious thing happens in societies where a huge amount of the collective income derives from outside the local economy and the local tax base.

They do not see a connection between the money they receive and the action of earning it.  The money that flows into the collective pot – the government treasury – seems to appear by magic.

That might sound a bit odd but if you think about it this way, you may get the idea.  Whatever you did for your first paying job, you could see a direct relationship between the labour you expended and the cash you received in exchange.  Painting a fence earned you an amount of money. 

Paint two fences and you could get twice as much money. Or paint another bigger fence and you could get a bit more, Depending on how big the fence was and how much more paint you needed and how much more time it took you to finish painting, as a result,  you could get more money for painting the fence.

And if everybody in your community painted fences or had the same basic connection between labour and reward,  you could all understand it when someone asked you to give a bit of your fence-painting money so that you could buy a fire-truck to fight fires in your town.  That extra bit of money for the community is a portion of your individual earnings from fence-painting or ditch-digging or tree cutting, or whatever it was that you did to make money. 

But what about a place where, in addition to that cash, you all shared in something like money that came from producing oil?

The ABCs of ABC #nlpoli

 

In 2004, Danny Williams fought for three months against a federal government decision that had been settled – at least for the federal government – earlier in the year as part of the usual budget cycle.

Williams got the money the federal government had allocated but won the domestic war for public opinion.

In 2007,  Williams and his provincial Conservatives launched a second political holy war against the federal government’s budget decisions.  Williams waged a much longer war,  lost it, but was widely credited at home with a victory.

There were other similarities

Cabinet control of Crown corporations #nlpoli

Hearings at the pubic utilities board revealed that senior executives at Nalcor received hefty bonuses again in 2014 as they have in other. 

Ostensibly, they are a reward for achieving corporate performance targets. Given that Nalcor has had some serious problems with its capital works and maintenance program over the past decade, it is rather surprising to see people getting great gobs of cash while the company hasn’t been performing.

Ostensibly, the bonuses are part of a compensation package that keeps the company competitive.  That’s how Nalcor chief executive Ed Martin justified the compensation now that we understand they are the chief cause of the cost increases Nalcor is using to justify its request for an increase in electricity rates this year.

Near the bottom of a very big rabbit hole #nlpoli

Thursday was one of those days where you felt like you had dropped down the rabbit hole with Alice.

Or maybe had indulged a bit too heavily in some mind-altering substance.

There was Lorraine Michael on the radio complaining that Muskrat Falls would likely cause environmental problems through the release of methyl mercury.  Let’s be clear:  there is nothing we know about Muskrat Falls today on any subject that wasn’t known when Lorraine endorsed Muskrat Falls. Yet, there is Lorraine trying to make it sound like she never, ever supported this megaproject.

Chainsaw Earle keeps austerity on the table #nlpoli

NDP leader Earle McCurdy called the province’s major open line show on Thursday and by the sounds of things he hasn’t backed off the position that the size of the government’s financial problems will mean more cuts.

Sure he said he was opposed to austerity,  but what Earle did say was that the government will have to cut jobs, lay people off and slash spending to cope with its financial problems. 

Potato, potato, Earle.

As Karl’s mom would say… #nlpoli

The Conservatives came to power in 2003 promising to do things a new way.

People thought that meant the Tories would do away with the practice of stuffing people into fat government jobs based solely on their political connections.

And so the Conservatives proved they were different by appointing failed candidate Joan Cleary to run the Bull Arm Corporation.  Cleary had absolutely no relevant experience, but they owed her some pork and so she got the high-paid job.

Smoke, mirrors, and Harper’s senate moratorium #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Heading into an election and with the three major federal parties within five or six points of each other in the opinion polls, the Prime Minister has decided that this is the time to talk about reforming the senate.

Stephen Harper said last week that he will not make any more appointments to the senate.  His plan is to create a crisis and then either reform the senate or abolish it in the ensuing melee among and with the provincial premiers.

The New Democrats are flattered. They have already advocated abolishing the senate altogether. This is a popular idea in Quebec where the NDP are threatened by the resurgence of the Bloc Quebecois.  The NDP won its current status as official opposition in 2011 with a surprising haul of seats in the province as the Bloc vote collapsed and its supporters looked for a politically friendly home. 

The sovereignists found a welcome embrace from the NDP.  To the extent that anyone else in the country thinks about the senate, it is likely only as the object of derision given the recent scandals over spending.  Few have thought through the implication of the NDP plan.  In Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, it would cut in half the province’s representation in Ottawa. 

Overcooked Ambition #nlpoli

Nameless Conservative Party insiders predict that without Ches Crosbie as a candidate, the federal Conservative party will be crippled in Newfoundland and Labrador in the next election.

Supposedly Ches could have raised $100,000 dollars already.  But without Ches, they won’t raise a penny. Volunteers will stay home, too.  

But here’s the thing: 

CBC’s  story on Thursday is essentially more of the same completely preposterous Ches-the-Saviour-of-the-Conservative-Nation fairy tale that John and Jane Crosbie have been shovelling since Canada Day.

Contending Political Strategies #nlpoli

Starting last Friday, the ironically-named Conservatives currently running the place started holding a series of “pre-budget” announcements.

They started with news that to deal with the massive financial crisis they would be dumping 77 and a half teaching positions in the provincial school system.  About twice that many would retire, so the school boards in the province would only hire enough teachers to fill half the empty slots.  To make that fit with the declining student enrolment,  the school boards would adjust the allowed class sizes by one student per teacher for grades 4 to 6 and by two students per teacher for grades 7 to 9.

Other than that, no change in staffing.

On Monday, the finance minister announced that the massive financial problem the government is facing led the government to cut the public service by zero real people.