It’s things like the kiss-off Michael Graydon got when he left the B.C. Lottery Corp. that make you wonder about the core review and the B.C. Liberals’ purported vigilance when it comes to maintaining austerity.
For inexplicable reasons, the corporation paid out more than appears required to the boss after he informed the company he was quitting.
Bringing a CEO’s contract to a close can be a complicated affair. But there doesn’t look to be any onus on the Crown corporation to be as generous as it was to an ex-employee, particularly one who was immediately joining a casino company where, no doubt, he will be making far more.
Graydon dealt the hands out to the industry for the six years he ran the corporation. Now he’s walked around the table and elected to play one of them, as the new CEO of a partnership involving Paragon Gaming. It has big plans for a casino next to B.C. Place. Deputy ministers have a one-year cooling-off period before they can take jobs that might relate to their public-service expertise. There’s no good reason why Crown CEOs shouldn’t chill out for the same period of time.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong said this week he shared concerns expressed by the NDP about the arrangement.
The only stricture on Graydon is a confidentiality agreement that forbids him from using information that belongs to the corporation. That’s unenforceable and absurd. As the master of the gambling industry in B.C, his knowledge about the sector is precisely why he was hired. But it’s the terms of his departure that rankle the most.
BCLC disclosures show he made $421,000 in 2010-11, $461,000 in 2011-12 and $465,000 in 2012-13. He tendered his resignation Jan. 30, to take effect March 31. The board decided to shorten the notice period to just four days and make his last day Feb. 4. The move was obviously because he was joining the gambling industry, which suggests they were aware of the perception problem. But then they put together a final payout that seems to be based on him staying until March 31, after all.
Under questioning from the NDP, de Jong outlined Graydon’s last paycheque. It included $8,600 in regular pay, a $35,600 salary-holdback payout and severance pay of $48,000.
And de Jong approved the amount at the time, since it complied with the rules.
He has ordered a review of the potential conflict-of-interest angle in Graydon joining a casino right after leaving the corporation. It s not likely to turn up much, because there are no rules forbidding what just happened.
What’s left is an illustration of a Crown corporation that shelled out more than it needed to, for no good reason, when the boss left. (Coincidentally, the lottery corporation laid off 67 people this week to cope with financial pressures.) The lax approach is the kind of thing Core Review Minister Bill Bennett should be all over. But he’s preoccupied with defending the redesign of the agricultural land reserve, which has nothing to do with efficiency or austerity.
There is some kind of internal audit underway at the corporation. But it started two weeks before Graydon left, which only compounds the mystery.
You think a corporation in the middle of an audit would be a little more conscious of its outlays. But even while spending was supposedly under scrutiny, the board paid out $48,000 in severance to someone who quit voluntarily and had a new job waiting for him.
Just So You Know: After the legislature digested that burst of generosity, the next issue that came up was single mothers’ welfare rates. They collect $945 a month, but if they manage to get any child support, it comes off the welfare cheque. Hard to defend at the best of times, but particularly after seeing the easy-going BCLC approach to spending, and an earlier round of concerns about politicians’ travel costs.
lleyne@timescolonist.com
