NDP hiring partisans by the dozen to fill high-paying government jobs

B.C.’s NDP government has stacked its new offices and the province’s communications branch with dozens of former party workers and partisan loyalists in the kind of patronage hiring spree it used to decry under the previous Liberal government.

The new NDP administration has awarded lucrative taxpayerpaid government jobs to campaign managers, field organizers, digital communications specialists, financial agents and constituency assistants, according to a Postmedia analysis of government cabinet orders used to make the hires.

In one case, the NDP hired Kassandra Dycke, the party’s failed 2013 candidate in CourtenayComox, to an $80,000 ministerial assistant job to Health Minister Adrian Dix. When the previous Liberal government in 2013 hired several of its defeated candidates, then-critic John Horgan was irate.

“That seems to be the foundation of the B.C. Liberals’ jobs plan: Every time we look at the orders in council, there’s a new failed candidate who has been given a sizable pay increase and is now working on the government dime,” Horgan said on July 4, 2013.

“There are no job qualifications for them. (Were) they interviewed for the positions against other qualified candidates? We have a basement teeming with interns — young capable people who don’t profess to have a partisan stripe, working for both caucuses. Did they have an opportunity to get one of these jobs?”

But the Horgan government has followed the same path as the Liberals. Now in power, it doesn’t view those types of hires as a problem.

“It is both normal and necessary to hire staff who share the government’s vision and can implement its commitments,” the premier’s office wrote in an emailed statement.

“Our government has been fully transparent about its staff appointments, including salaries,” the statement, released Tuesday, read.

The government’s ministerial assistant and communications jobs are littered with young New Democrats, former Alberta and federal NDP staff, 11 former NDP constituency assistants and at least six former Vision Vancouver staffers, including the party’s previous digital director and manager of youth engagement. Executive director Stepan Vdovine quit in August to work as an NDP assistant. Former Vision parks board chair Niki Sharma, a lawyer, was also hired to a similar job.

The new ministerial assistants include Caelie Frampton, an NDP digital campaigner in the 2017 election; Sarena Talbot, an NDP field organizer; Lori Ann Winstanley, a veteran NDP campaigner who most recently worked at the MoveUp union; and Christian Romulo Avendano, a canvasser and fundraiser for the party during byelections in 2016. The salaries range between $72,000 and $94,500 for senior assistants.

The Liberal Opposition said it’s calculated an almost 27 per cent increase in the amount the public is spending on ministerial staff under the new NDP government.

“The increased politicization of government communications is very disturbing and reflects another broken NDP promise,” Liberal caucus spokesman Shane Mills said in a statement. “There are more political staff in ministers’ offices now and budgets have gone up substantially.”

It’s been common for governments to hire partisan loyalists as aides in ministerial offices. However, the NDP sharply criticized the practice while in opposition.

But it’s not only the partisan patronage hires that have raised eyebrows.

The government used public resources to create a new Better B.C. website — using a tag line employed by the NDP during the election — that regurgitates the three priority areas of the NDP campaign. On an email sign-up page, the government privacy contact listed is Karl Hardin, the NDP’s digital director during the election campaign whom the Horgan government has hired as an executive director in its communications branch.

The upper ranks of the new government communications wing are also partisan New Democrats, including several who worked for the 1990s NDP government, as well as former NDP caucus employees. The new director of event services, Rick Devereux, was the NDP’s 2017 election tour director.

The Better B.C. website also features a video in which actors praise the NDP government for following through on election promises like eliminating bridge tolls. The video was made by Stephen Hargreaves, a newly hired producer in the communications branch who most recently produced the NDP’s 2017 election campaign videos.

The increased politicization of government communications is very disturbing and reflects another broken NDP promise.