Taxpayers pick up $1 million tab for pretty pictures

Keeping a tight lid on spending is “the foundation” of Premier Christy Clark’s approach to governing, or at least that’s what her new election commercial says.

But the TV ad somehow fails to mention the near $1 million that Clark’s government has spent on photography services since she became premier.

Yes, photography: $923,374 to be precise, for the salaries and massive travel expenses of two full-time photographers to take still photos and videos for the government.

The pictures and videos provide positive content for the government’s social-media channels on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. It included $5,413 to send a photographer to Paris last November to take pictures and videos of the premier at a UN climate-change conference.

Let’s break down some of these numbers: Since Clark became premier in 2011, the government has spent more than $3,500 a week on social-media photos and videos. That’s more than $500 a day, every day, for the past five years.

How does this square with Clark’s campaign commitment to control government spending?

“Controlling government spending is the foundation, it’s the bedrock, of what we’re trying to do,” Clark says in her newest Liberal Party TV commercial.

It’s true the government has kept a tight rein on spending in places like provincial nursing homes, where the cruel separation of elderly married seniors earned the government humiliating global media coverage last week.

But you won’t see those heartbreaking photos of weeping separated seniors Wolfram and Anita Gottschalk on the government’s Facebook page.

The photos and videos you buy with your hard-earned tax dollars are invariably positive public-relations images that wouldn’t be out of place in one of those Liberal Party campaign ads.

In fact, the photographer who accompanied the premier to Paris for three days at taxpayers’ expense once worked as a photographer for the Liberal Party.

How does the government defend this profligate spending on pictures?

For one thing, it says all the spending is out in the open and reported in public budget documents.

The government is also promising to more fully disclose the expenses of Clark and her cabinet ministers by scanning and posting their credit-card receipts when travelling.

That’s great, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is the new gold standard for government transparency. Those bragging rights belong to the government of Alberta, which routinely discloses the travel, meal and hospitality expenses claimed by cabinet ministers, their senior staff and top government officials.

Christy Clark should do the same thing here — and drastically cut her photography budget while she’s at it.