What size of an expense needs to be approved?
MLAs agree: After some wrestling, a legislature committee comes up with a fi gure of $ 5,000
For an hour or so one afternoon this week, a legislature committee wrestled with a question for the ages: How large or small can an expenditure be before it attracts undue attention from the news media?
The B. C. Liberals thought maybe $ 2,500. The New Democrats suggested somewhere between $ 500 and $ 5,000. The auditor general wondered if $ 10,000 were the dividing line.
Eventually the members of the legislative assembly management committee ( LAMC) realized that it also depends on who is doing the spending and what they are spending it on. But I’m getting ahead of the debate here, and need to circle back for a bit of background.
The occasion was the meeting Tuesday of the three B. C. Liberals and two New Democrats charged with overseeing the $ 70- million budget for the assembly and its attendant services for MLAs, including Hansard, security and the office of the Speaker.
The galvanizing topic was the preceding week’s media coverage of overspending by Speaker and LAMC chair Linda Reid. Those items included $ 48,000 for a high- tech computer console at her station in the house, and the notorious $ 733 muffin rack, actually a “food display/ case” for coffee, muffins and other free snacks in the members’ lounge.
The first time members of the committee heard about those and other Reid- authorized expenditures was the March 4 front page story in The Vancouver Sun by reporter Rob Shaw.
“I got engaged on the console when the cameras flashed on and the microphones were put in front of me and I was asked: why did this happen?” as NDP house leader John Horgan put it in his remarks to the committee on the controversy. “The media knew more about this than I did: I don’t think that’s acceptable.”
When Horgan was first asked about Reid’s overspending, he mustered a strong defence of her. For that, I gather he took some heat from his more skeptical colleagues. He would appear to have incorporated the criticism into his less- sparing comments to the committee.
“When we embark upon these capital projects that are obvious to the public, I would suggest that we should be told at the front end … If we are going to embark on a transparency agenda, it starts with every penny, right down to the muffin. I believe that we would have all been better served over the past number of weeks had we been right up front about these expenditures and not clandestine about how we distributed the information that resulted from them.”
Well ahead of him on that score was government house leader Mike de Jong. He’d indicated from the day of the initial news report that Reid should account for every penny of expenditure. He now weighed in with a suggestion that the committee establish a firm threshold for future approval of and reporting on capital expenditures. “Is it $ 1,000? Is it $ 5,000?” he asked , later amending that to: “Err on the side of caution. Make it $ 2,500 and if it becomes onerous, we change it.”
Enter the other New Democrat on the committee, caucus chair Shane Simpson, who didn’t want committee members micromanaging sums as small as $ 500.
After some more back- andforth along those lines, the committee sought the opinion of auditor general Russ Jones, who has been attending LAMC sessions as an adviser.
“You’re absolutely right that you’d need to set a threshold for which projects should come to the committee to get approval,” Jones advised. “That is entirely up to you guys to decide — whether $ 10,000 and above is the right amount or whatever.”
He continued, offering what he admitted was “probably a bad example — if you go to BC Hydro, it’s probably $ 10 million.” That drew a laugh from the MLAs, for that huge sum would barely qualify as a rounding error at the multi- billion dollar Crown corporation.
But seriously, Mr. Jones, what do you suggest? “I think the committee needs to decide what’s going to get the media interested and be asking questions,” he said. “That is really the risk you have to look at. Is a $ 2,000 item going to raise the media’s attention?”
There being only one media representative in attendance, namely me ( other members of the press gallery were listening on the Hansard channel), all eyes turned to yours truly. “Depends on whether it is a slow news day,” I said, which drew a laugh.
De Jong had the more apt observation, which was that a $ 2,000 expenditure could easily generate a headline “if it were spent on a toilet seat.” Or a muffin rack.
Horgan then observed that fuller disclosure would undoubtedly be a good thing: “It will curtail other frivolous expenditures … if people are watching you, you use your head faster than you would otherwise … the more transparency, the fewer bad expenditures are made.”
But he wondered, was de Jong sure the threshold for advance approval and reporting of expenditures needed to be set as low as $ 2,500? “$ 5,000 is fine with me,” returned the government house leader and the committee settled on that, providing it were also consulted every time a project is headed over budget by 10 per cent or more. The $ 5,000 threshold is less cautious by de Jong’s definition. But it might serve until something as stupid as a $ 733 muffin rack comes along.