Hydro hire is blatant patronage, Dix says

B.C. Hydro’s decision to hire Energy Minister Bill Bennett’s chief of staff to a newly created senior management position is a blatant patronage appointment that comes at the expense of taxpayers, NDP critic Adrian Dix says.

Chris Sandve, who has served as chief of staff to the minister of energy and mines since 2012, has been hired as the new director of policy and reporting in Hydro’s Energy, Regulatory & Business Planing Group, according to an internal email provided to The Province. He will be paid $135,000 a year.

The position comes into effect June 8, according to the email, which was sent out by Janet Fraser, Hydro’s senior-vice president of Energy, Regulatory & Business Planning. Other organizational changes, including the creation of two new additional manager positions, were also detailed in the May 21 email.

“This future-focused role will be accountable for providing leadership, strategic direction and oversight to existing and emerging provincial/federal policies and regulations impacting B.C. Hydro,” Fraser wrote in the email.

Dix says the hire “is just a poke in the eye” to ratepayers and another example of waste, bloated management ranks and runaway costs at the Crown corporation that he has been raising in the legislature for the past several weeks.

“It is an obvious patronage appointment,” he said, noting Sandve also previously served as regional field organizer for the B.C. Liberal Party. “This is the Liberal government’s priorities: Jobs for their friends and insiders at a time when ratepayers are paying massive rate increases.”

The new management positions were announced in April and were posted internally and externally “to find the most suitable candidate,” Hydro said in an emailed statement.