[國際新聞] Lifting the lid on MLA spending secrecy minister, finance, public

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Lifting the lid on MLA spending secrecy

Latest push by finance minister could see receipts being made public



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Lifting+spending+secrecy/9802613/story.html#ixzz30fIAYERA
VICTORIA — The B.C. public will soon get to see the receipts for expenses and perks they pay their provincial politicians, says the finance minister. Mike de Jong told The Vancouver Sun he plans to push MLA expense disclosure into “the next level” at a meeting of the legislature’s management committee this week.
That’s expected to include a recommendation for line-by-line disclosure of politician expenses, and some way to let the public to see receipts of purchases.
It’s all in an effort to address public concerns after several months of spending scandals.
B.C.’s current rules don’t provide enough detail for the public to know if an MLA is pinching pennies or flying on first class trips to expensive hotels and indulging in lavish perks.
The system, with monthly and quarterly totals, is “effectively useless” in figuring out if money is being misspent, said Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Politicians are beginning to get the message.
“I would like to think we have arrived at a point where everyone, irrespective of which side of the house they sit on, understands the legitimacy and credibility of the institution itself is compromised when there are these lingering doubts,” de Jong said in an interview.
“We have to concede that doubts that exist in the public mind are the result of uncovered abuses. Not by everyone. They are the exceptions, but they have been pretty graphic exceptions.
“The fundamental principle says the public deserves to know how their money is being spent. They get to see all the receipts that a member of the public service spends on their purchasing (credit) cards, (as well as) cabinet ministers and the premier.”
The call for change comes after high-profile spending controversies, including Speaker Linda Reid’s spending spree on questionable upgrades at the legislature and business-class flights for her husband to accompany her to South Africa.
The debate has peaked at a time when Premier Christy Clark is warning MLAs of a historic shift in public attitudes to their perks and entitlements. Many were authorized decades ago but no longer enjoy public support in this period of fiscal austerity and cuts across virtually the entire government.
The public’s foul mood has been fanned by spending scandals in recent years in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, the Canadian Senate and in Britain — where an MP famously claimed expenses for cleaning the moat at his rural mansion.
But in B.C., modernization is happening at a “glacial pace” and hampered by “systemic hesitancy” of some politicians and staff, admitted de Jong.
De Jong has championed the issue of MLA expense disclosure in recent years, posting his own information on his website and, at times, publicly chastising his colleagues for resisting.
He said his advice to concerned MLAs has been consistent: If you are worried about the public seeing how you spend taxpayer dollars, maybe you aren’t spending it properly.
At issue are the hundreds of thousands of dollars MLAs get each year for salaries, meal allowances, travel, spousal travel, staff pay, constituency offices and housing near the legislature in Victoria.

Much of it is publicly disclosed in the form of totals every four months. The NDP voluntarily provides monthly reports.
But none of it comes with enough detail for the public to check the cost of an individual meal, the price of a hotel room, the destination of a flight, the purpose of an out-of-province trip, or the cost of an MLA’s second home in Victoria.
Any questionable spending, such as business class trips for spouses that MLAs have had to repay, remains hidden within totals.
That is until rumours and leaks to journalists force politicians to admit expenditures.
The public can’t tell from the reports whether a politician’s travel total included two first-class trips overseas and stay at a five-star hotel, or 25 economy-class flights back and forth to that MLA’s riding.
There’s no public information on the more than $10 million spent annually to run 85 MLA constituency offices and pay office staff (disclosure on that expense could begin later this month).
And MLAs don’t have to explain or disclose how they spend up to $19,000 a year to rent or purchase second residences in Victoria.
Ordinary MLAs should face the same transparency requirements as cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats, whose spending is itemized online and whose detailed receipts are available upon public request, said de Jong.
He will make the recommendation at a meeting of the all-party legislature management committee on Tuesday.
“That next step, in my view, will alleviate a lot of the other concerns that have existed, whether it’s on transportation, flights, accommodation or meal allowances,” de Jong said.
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The public money used to finance second homes for MLAs in Victoria is one of the most contentious policies up for review.
While some of the money is paid directly to landlords and hotels, more than $500,000 a year is being handed to MLAs without receipts or proof that it is spent on housing.
Cowichan Valley MLA Bill Routley lives an hour’s drive from the B.C. legislature, but when he has to get to work in the capital he brings his home with him. And the public pays.
Taxpayers are helping Routley foot the bill for an RV that he bought to live in while working in Victoria. The money comes from a $1,000 monthly allowance provided to MLAs to help them live in the capital when required. MLAs do not need to provide receipts or account on how it is spent. And it is paid for all 12 months of the year, meaning it is paid even when the legislature is not in session.
Some politicians use the money to rent apartments. Others to pay mortgages on second homes or condos. Occasionally, an MLA like Routley creatively uses the housing money to purchase something like a motorhome. At least two former MLAs have used it to buy boats in the last few years.
Critics are calling for more transparency and accountability on what kind of second homes taxpayers are financing for politicians, and for MLAs to provide receipts.

There are three Victoria housing allowance options available for MLAs, but only two require proof that the politician spent the cash on housing. Politicians who represent Greater Victoria ridings aren’t eligible for housing allowances.
Most MLAs — 42 of 78 eligible after the May 2013 provincial election, including Routley — chose an option that pays them $1,000 cash each month, without requiring a single receipt.
Another 27 MLAs stayed in hotels, with the bills reimbursed by the legislature. Nine submitted receipts for rents and mortgages in Greater Victoria, and are therefore eligible for a higher amount — $1,583 a month, up to $19,000 a year.
Routley’s $12,000 in annual receipt-free housing money covers his RV payments, as well as the cost of renting a motor home pad in the capital, says the NDP.
Routley declined an interview to discuss his motorhome.
First elected in 2009, Routley could have claimed as much as $60,000 in receipt-free housing money since becoming an MLA, though there is no public record on how it was spent.
Port Coquitlam MLA Mike Farnworth rents a room in a friend’s house a few blocks from the legislature.
Farnworth won’t say how much the room costs, or what he does with the $1,000 he gets on months the legislature doesn’t sit and he’s rarely in Victoria.
“She charges me a going rate, between me and her,” he said of his friend, who happens to be a former NDP MLA. “And when I don’t stay there, I stay in hotels. That comes out of the same money.”
The legislature only sat 17 days between May and December of 2013. MLAs who chose the monthly receipt-free cash, like Farnworth and Routely, received approximately $7,000 during that time. There is no way for the public to know if it was spent on housing or, in some months, taken as tax-free cash.
Regardless, Farnworth argued it’s still a cheaper option than renting a place full-time, which would increase his costs.
But it’s not cheaper than hotels, especially in years where the legislature rarely convenes.
Independent MLA Vicki Huntington spent $1,954 during the same nine-month period in 2013, one of the lowest amounts of any MLA, by billing the public for hotels only when she was in Victoria.
“I don’t believe we should be taking money without receipts,” said Huntington. “It was the option a lot of members told me that I should take. A lot of them do take it. … A lot of people are using it toward a mortgage, and I just don’t think building equity on the tax dollar is appropriate for myself.”
Others want full transparency and disclosure.

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“Show the public what you spent the money on,” said Bateman. “Let the public decide whether it was good value.”

NDP caucus chairman Shane Simpson said he doesn’t know of anyone abusing the housing allowance, and that in Victoria, with high housing costs, “$1,000 doesn’t buy much.”

The system allows for the MLAs to make their own choices that best suit their lifestyles, he said. Some people like the daily clean sheets of hotels, while others want a kitchen to cook food and a place to store clothes, he said.

“People are different, that’s going to create different kinds of costs,” said Simpson. “We need to figure that out, and figure out what’s reasonable around that.”

There also needs to be some way to accommodate young politicians with families, said Simpson.

“What is it that makes this place a little bit family-friendly? If you don’t want just middle-aged white guys here running the province then you have to create opportunity for young women who might have young families to be able to accommodate them to be here and represent what they represent, or young men with young families, or some way of doing that in order to allow people to have a family life.”

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Despite its many blind spots, B.C.’s current system of disclosure for MLA expenses has come a long way in a short time. It was what critics called a “public spanking” by B.C.’s financial watchdog that kick-started a basic accounting of expenses in 2011.

Politician expenses are paid from the $70-million a year budget for the legislative assembly. The assembly, which includes the capital building and legislative grounds, had never been thoroughly audited in its almost 150-year history, before then auditor general John Doyle cracked open the books.

Doyle’s findings were scathing. He concluded the finances were so poorly managed that it wasn’t even possible to tell if money was missing. MLA credit cards for travel and other expenses were being paid without proper receipts, he said.

A chastened all-party committee of MLAs, who were supposed to oversee the legislature, promised to stop meeting in secret, overhaul the financial system and start posting some totals for MLA expenses online every four months.

The MLA responsible for the legislature, Speaker Bill Barisoff, retired, as did the building’s top staffer, Clerk of the House George MacMinn. The legislature’s comptroller was dismissed.

A new boss, Linda Reid, took over as Speaker in July, pledging to do a better job that her predecessors. But within months she found herself at the centre of a firestorm over her judgment and financial management.

Reid was forced to repay almost $5,500 last month after admitting she billed taxpayers to fly her husband business class to South Africa so he could accompany her to a parliamentary conference.

She hired her campaign manager to a new job, and then gave the manager an expense account for hotels, meals and flights to commute between Richmond and Victoria.

She racked up more than $100,000 in building upgrades at the legislature without telling the committee of MLAs overseeing the budget, including a $48,112 touch-screen computer for her throne and a $13,499 MLA TV lounge with free muffins and snacks. In response, MLAs moved to limit her spending power to projects worth less than $5,000.

In many ways, the Speaker’s spending has become the flashpoint for the failures of B.C.’s public disclosure system.

She’s been accused of exploiting a loophole in the disclosures rules, which let MLAs hide questionable individual purchases within larger totals. Buried within her totals was her husband’s trip to South Africa, which only became public because she posted photos of her husband petting a giraffe on her Twitter account. “There’s no doubt she was hiding it in the quarterly total,” said Bateman.

Reid approves all out-of-province travel for MLAs, and in 2013 she gave herself permission to spend the most of any politician at $19,687. She won’t say where she went, or how much the trips cost. However, the Sun has learned in 2013 she travelled to South Africa, London, Scotland, Ottawa, California, Oregon and Washington state, among other locations.

Instead of hiding, Bateman said Reid should be leading by example. “She needs to be more accountable, throw open those books and open those receipts,” he said.

Reid’s ducking and dodging has led to another review.

Bill Bennett, the minister responsible for the core review process designed to trim government spending, blasted Reid for “poor judgment.”

He sought a legal opinion on whether he could unleash auditors upon Reid’s budget and MLA expense accounts. The Justice Ministry told Bennett he didn’t have the authority.

But de Jong, as the ranking Liberal MLA on the legislative management committee, took up the cause. He said he intends to bring in an independent party to conduct a systemic review of how the legislature does business and spends its $70 million annual budget.

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Not everyone agrees that B.C. should be moving to a receipt-based system for politician expenses.

Simpson said the Opposition New Democrats have been voluntarily publishing more detailed monthly expense reports than the Liberals since 2013. The NDP forms break out the cost of individual flights, mileage claims and the amount spent daily on meals, but don’t make receipts public.

Simpson said he’s never had a call from the public expressing interest in seeing receipts. “I don’t think it’s necessary.”

Instead, he said the NDP wants the Liberals to follow its lead and put more details on the public expense forms.

“We think some model like that, which isn’t about monthly totals but is about every item, is probably the way to go.”

Though the NDP and Liberals disagree over receipts, both sides, as well as the auditor general, agree the general management of MLA expenses is slowly improving.

“I think it’s pretty significant,” said Simpson. “It’s pretty much a sea change in terms of accountability. But it’s not finished. It’s not complete.”

Auditor General Russ Jones continues to monitor the issue and provide advice to MLAs overseeing the building.

“I think they are making really good progress,” said Jones.

Legislature staff have introduced solid financial controls, he said.

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MLA management meetings are now in public, rather than in private in the Speaker’s office, where there was no record of the debate or votes on issues that could cost millions. Those closed-door meetings led to a controversial pay hike for politicians in 2007 and, in 2011, at the height of public anger at the Harmonized Sales Tax, a secret severance scheme for MLAs under threat of recall.

MLAs will later this month produce their first reports on how they spend $119,000 a year to staff and run their constituency offices, which has never been public.

Even the $61 daily per diem for MLA meals, which politicians used to claim whether they used it or not, has been clarified so they are only reimbursed for what they eat.

“We have made progress,” said de Jong.

But stories of abuse mean questions remain, he admitted. “The next logical step is to move from the aggregated data that we now, at last provide, to more specific personalized data as some jurisdictions do.”

As the mechanics of disclosure change, so will the attitudes of MLAs, said Bateman, whose taxpayer watchdog group has been pushing for accountability for several years.

The old advice for B.C. MLAs used to be not to say anything out loud they wouldn’t want to see splashed on the front page of The Vancouver Sun, he said.

“Now, it’s don’t expense anything you wouldn’t want published on the front page of The Sun,” he said. “It’s a shift for politicians to get their heads around that.”

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MLA pay and perks:A breakdown of what MLAs get on the job

$101,859: a year for base salary.

$119,000: a year to run a constituency office

$12,000 to $19,000: A housing allowance of $1,000 a month with no requirement for receipts; OR up to $19,000 a year toward renting or owning a home or condo with receipts or paid directly to the landlord; OR up to $17,000 a year for hotels supported by receipts. The allowance also can be used for furniture rental, utilities, parking, insurance and strata fees. The idea is that MLAs incur extra housing expenses when they have to work in Victoria.

$61: Daily per diem for food, no receipts required, while in Victoria or working outside a constituency.

In-constituency travel: Ranges from $3,190 for urban ridings to $11,580 for coastal/remote ridings so MLAs can travel to community events. A travel budget ranging from nothing in some urban ridings to $3,860 a year for coastal/remote ridings for the MLA’s constituency assistant.

Other travel: Unlimited out of province and country travel for trips approved by the Speaker. Twelve “accompanying person” paid travel trips for family or staff a year.An MLA travel credit card with a monthly limit of $15,000.

Moving on: A “gold plated” pension plan where taxpayers pay $4 for every $1 an MLA contributes, estimates the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. There are also health and dental plans.Up to 15 months salary ($127,324) in a transitional allowance for MLAs who decide not to run or who are defeated in an election.Career counselling, education and training for former MLAs up to $9,000 with receipts, at the discretion of the Speaker.

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EXPENSE REPORTING

B.C. MLAs could clear up controversy on their taxpayer-paid expense accounts with just a few simple steps, says Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Those steps include:

• Publish scanned copies of all the receipts for everything MLAs purchase. “Basically, anything on the taxpayer dime, there should be a receipt that people can look at.”

• Make it mandatory that MLAs provide written context for trips paid for using public funds. “A very brief description on every trip, who went, what it was for, and ideally any positive outcomes of it.”

• Expand B.C.’s Freedom of Information law to include the legislature and MLA expense accounts. Though ministries, core government and Crown corporations fall under FOI, the legislature is exempt.

• Eliminate some unnecessary perks, like severances and training allowances for defeated or retired MLAs.

• Get rid of cash allowances, and make any repayments subject to providing receipts.

• Ban taxpayer-funded trips for spouses of MLAs.

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COMPARISON

B.C. may be struggling toward a new era of disclosure on MLA expenses but it remains far behind some other provinces and cities. Alberta

Alberta has taken the lead among provinces with online databases that track politician spending down to the level of scanned receipts, regularly-posted flight manifests for government aircraft, international trip expenses, severance information for senior staff and detailed spending reports for top bureaucrats.

“We’ve been described as the gold standard in Canada for the way we disclose expenses,” said Don Scott, Alberta’s associate minister for transparency, accountability and transformation. “In my view, showing receipts authenticates and shows Albertans exactly what has been spent and how much money has been used. It’s probably the best documentation an Albertan is going to see.”

Using Alberta’s system, it’s possible to check how much a politician spent on an individual meal, hotel or flight – to see if it was a lavish perk that was out-of-line with public expectations or just a normal work-related expense.

“A lot of it is probably not of great interest to the average Albertan,” said Scott. “But it’s important to have it up there for people to inspect.”

Alberta’s legislature also falls under the province’s Freedom of Information law, so the public not only has the right to request more information, but politicians are bound by law to respond. B.C.’s legislature is exempt from FOI, and there’s no public recourse when an MLA refuses to outline an expense.

Nova Scotia

In Nova Scotia, MLA expense transparency came about after that province’s auditor general probed politician spending in 2010 and found serious cases of misuse and abuse. Four MLAs there were convicted of a variety of fraud, forgery and breach of trust charges.

Nova Scotia now posts a far more detailed line-by-line accounting than B.C., allowing the public to see details of meals, advertising campaigns, furniture, cellphones, office rent, Christmas cards and even snow removal.

Others

The City of Toronto also runs an expense report website that provides detailed breakdowns of actual money spent by the politicians. Travel trips include a description of how each event was official city business.

Other provinces are struggling like B.C. to modernize. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Ontario and the federal government in Ottawa are all debating possible expansions to their MLA expense disclosure rules. All are at or below B.C.’s current level of disclosure

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High-profile spending controversies, including Speaker Linda Reid’s spending spree on questionable upgrades at the legislature and business-class flights for her husband to accompany her to South Africa, have prompted changes to political behaviour. ‘The fundamental principle says the public deserves to know how their money is being spent,’ says Finance Minister Mike de Jong.