The allegations are serious, but British Columbians need to hear from the two legislature officials who are accused of “flagrant overspending.”
Legislature clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz were suspended last year after Speaker Darryl Plecas said he had uncovered misdeeds that would shock taxpayers.
The allegations in Plecas’s 76-page report released Monday are indeed shocking, even if they don’t match the Speaker’s hyberbolic promises. James and Lenz have issued a statement saying that the accusations are untrue and promising to address all the allegations. In reading the report, we must keep in mind that we haven’t heard their side yet.
Although it’s not a huge amount of money, the water-cooler topic of the day has to be the wood-splitter. Our tax dollars bought a $3,200 wood-splitter that was delivered to James’s home, where he and Lenz used it to cut firewood.
Since the RCMP seized the splitter after James offered to return it, there is no question that it exists. It stretches credulity to believe that the province’s legislative assembly needed a wood-splitter. If a tree falls on the legislature lawn, surely the civil service could rustle up a splitter from one of its work yards — or better yet, call a tree service.
The inexplicable forestry equipment is the most colourful example in a report full of allegations that imply cavalier use of public funds. If true, this suggests no one was keeping a responsible eye on the money.
Voters often look skeptically at foreign trips by MLAs and MPs, which seem to be more junket than serious work and usually involve stays at hotels that ordinary taxpayers could never afford. James and Lenz were apparently taking a leaf out of the parliamentarians’ book.
On trips to London, the report says, they stayed at expensive hotels and bought $1,000 suits, which they expensed to the legislature. They said the suits were part of the “uniform.” Other expenses included $1,300 worth of gift-shop purchases, $1,138 on a piece of luggage and $966 for clothing purchased at Brooks Brothers.
Entertaining foreign counterparts on trips abroad is a part of building relationships, but rules on what can be charged must be clear. Some rules do exist at the legislature: In 2014, then-speaker Linda Reid apologized and repaid $5,500 she charged for flying her husband to Africa.
While the wood-splitter and the pickup truck loads of alcohol that were allegedly shipped out of the legislative building cross a different line, most of these examples look like bad management and sloppy financial controls. However, they could also suggest business as usual, if such spending had long been permitted.
Overspending, some of which was signed off by Plecas, is not criminal. And we should be troubled that Plecas’s investigation seems to have treated it all as if it were criminal. Some things were properly referred to police and special prosecutors, but the rest should have been dealt with as a management issue.
If an employee expenses things he shouldn’t, he should be warned and given a chance to correct his behaviour in future. If he doesn’t, careful records have to be kept of the discipline process as his superiors try to straighten him out. Eventually, if all that fails, employees who refuse to follow the rules can be fired.
Investigating someone in secret, not telling them they are doing something wrong, not giving them a chance to correct their behaviour and then springing accusations on them after a long period is not sound management practice.
Questionable though the investigation might have been, it shines a needed light on spending practices at the legislature. We can hope that the scandal results in more transparency and greater scrutiny of the spending of MLAs, as well as of those who serve them.
