Speaker Linda Reid survived a volley over her spending habits with ease last week and will likely make it comfortably through a meeting this one on the same topic.
It’s partly because she has answers to some of the questions raised, and partly because she’s the Speaker of the B.C.
legislature.
Any politician who takes on a Speaker does so knowing the office holder can make their life hell in more ways than it’s possible to count.
Vancouver Sun colleague Rob Shaw celebrated the new spirit of openness on legislative spending since the auditor general eviscerated the management of the place by asking a number of impertinent questions about several of Reid’s projects.
The answers were splashed around last week and, in a time of austerity, they give some pause.
- She dropped $48,411 on a new console for a laptop by the chair from which she presides over the house.
- Another $13,448 went into a new MLAs lounge in the Legislature Library, including a $733 display case for some muffins.
- New drapes and reupholstering in her office cost $6,377, drapes in the dining room ate up another $13,965 and $6,278 was spent on a new media-scrum area.
- She also hired her campaign manager, Susan Wells, as an executive assistant, who has been travelling routinely to Victoria and racking up a still-undisclosed travel bill.
Any cabinet minister who racked up those costs at a time when ministry budgets for services are flatlining would be toasted by the Opposition.
But New Democrat house leader John Horgan’s equanimity in the face of the bills was striking.
“Linda needs to be given some slack here because she’s the first Speaker in 125 years to say: ‘This is what I’m doing.’”
His point was that Speakers for generations have had carte blanche to spend as they chose without having to publicly account for a nickel when it comes to itemized accounting. That came to a crashing end when former auditor general John Doyle took a look at the management of the legislature and condemned the bookkeeping.
Over the last two years, the casual, secretive operational structure has been blown up and replaced by open meetings and a new transparency. Faced with condemning the Speaker’s spending or celebrating the fact that the spending is out in the open, Horgan chose the latter path.
And he defended most of the renovation list on its own merits.
The electronic console gives her the same Internet access that laptop-toting MLAs have. And it had to fit in with the heritage look, he said.
“It required more than a couple of sheets of plywood.”
The new lounge was created with wheelchairs in mind, since there are three disabled MLAs who could only reach the old lounge by an inconvenient elevator.
The idea that MLAs need a lounge is still a debatable proposition. But if you buy the idea one is needed, it had to be wheelchair-accessible. Horgan said he wasn’t aware of three flat screens, but noted there can be three committee rooms broadcasting at times.
The media-scrum area was moved to make way for the wheelchair ramp.
Horgan said the spending will rankle some, and it will be discussed at the next open meeting of the management committee. But he noted at one time “there was a steel door over the Speaker’s office and expenditures far greater than the ones now being exposed were never touched, because of the secrecy.”
“I give Ms. Reid full credit for blowing the doors off that secretive committee and allowing you and the public to have an understanding of these expenditures.”
Government house leader Mike de Jong was circumspect on the topic, saying only that politicians need to be careful spending money, and the committee expects to hear a rationale for the projects.
“The signal we send as legislators is important.”
So is self-preservation, which is why this week’s questions will be gentle ones. Even the patronage appointment of a new employee on top of the various ones she already has isn’t likely to prompt anything too blunt.
lleyne@timescolonist.com
