Taxpayers taken to woodshed in shocking report

Speaker Darryl Plecas predicted B.C. taxpayers would “throw up” in disgust when they discovered the financial follies going on at the B.C. legislature.

You better stock up on your barf bags. The 76-page bombshell report Plecas dropped Monday is enough to make the whole province sick. The report details an astonishing spending spree at the people’s house, an unchecked culture of entitlement at the public trough and an ugly behindthe-scenes atmosphere of suspicion and backstabbing.

Flagrant overspending on luxurious overseas trips. Tens of thousands of personal expenses on the taxpayers’ tab. Inappropriate payouts of cash and employee benefits. Thousands of dollars of booze and equipment that may have been misappropriated.

It’s sickening, all right. Especially when you consider it may have been going on for years, and right under the noses of politicians and officials who are supposed to protect taxpayers.

Much of the report is aimed at Craig James, the clerk of the house, and Gary Lenz, the sergeant-at-arms, who were marched out of the legislature under police escort in November.

“Based on what I had seen and heard, I believed that there was a real possibility that crimes may have been committed, and I felt obligated to bring those matters to the attention of the RCMP,” Plecas wrote.

Have crimes occurred? The police and a pair of independent special prosecutors will make that call. No charges have been laid. For Plecas, the report reads like a slow awakening to a revolting reality of waste and entitlement surrounding him at the legislature.

At first, he seemed willing to go along with it all, expressing “surprise” at discovering fully stocked liquor cabinets in the Speaker’s office on his first day on the job. Then, just a few weeks later, he went on his first opulent overseas trip to the U.K. with James and Lenz, where they stayed in swanky hotels, went shopping and had a few low-stress meetings with U.K. officials.

“I was very surprised at how luxuriously we were travelling and how little we were doing for a work trip,” Plecas wrote. “I did not take an issue with it at the time because I was still new to the Speaker’s job and did not want to alienate these key officers.”

He’s certainly taking issue with it now, exposing a porkapalooza of questionable spending at taxpayers’ expense. Consider the curious case of the clerk’s wood-splitter.

“A wood-splitter and worktools trailer were purchased by the legislative assembly, but never arrived on site and instead were delivered directly to Mr. James’s personal residence where they have allegedly been used by Mr. James and Mr. Lenz for their own purposes,” Plecas wrote.

Talk about taking taxpayers to the woodshed!

Maybe the most sickening part of all this is it appears many of the expenses were approved as just the normal course of doing business.

Consider the meeting held just last October in which Lenz sat down with Plecas to discuss dubious “business trips” they could all take together.

“The message was implicit, but obvious, that we would determine later how to justify the locations we selected as a business purpose,” Plecas wrote.

“He said, ‘OK, where in the world do you want to go?’ ”

Taxpayers should be relieved that a forensic audit will be conducted — by an auditor-general, thankfully from outside B.C.