Nickel and Diming

There have been more than enough instances where public institutions have been seen to be wasteful of taxpayers' money. None, though, seems to get more attention than when people whose salaries are paid through tax funding appear to feel inordinately entitled to spend to their hearts' content. Laying claim to special entitlements, despite their superlative salaries.

Ontario Hydro's former chief executive officer, in her entitlements to having the taxpayer foot the bill for her children's nanny, their costly transportation, executive-level club memberships, her husband's sailing hobbies, along with a great number of other extras earned Eleanor Clitheroe the public's anger. She has moved on, is now an Anglican clergywoman. Chew on that one.

Her self-availing exploits have since been rivalled by other executives in other government and Crown agencies, and when these excesses have been publicized they have provided both titillation and rage from the electorate. And the governments involved solemnly declare that there will be heads to roll, that this cannot be permitted, and this practise belies rules and regulations.

Despite which, they continue. In the case of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation there's a bit of a tough call. Some of the claims made for inconsequential items like pen refills, dry cleaning, transportation, reveal niggardly mind-sets of absurd entitlements. When senior executives earn between $100,000 and $290,000 in salary, yet find it too inconvenient to be responsible for out-of-pocket expenses it speaks to obliviousness.

Or, perhaps gross stupidity, to think that there will be no oversight to disallow them to claim reimbursement for club memberships, vehicle appurtenances, clothing, even subway tokens, Internet use charges, and doughnuts. In private industry, particularly those where interaction with potential clients justifies an expense account because funding is made available to grow a client base, it may make sense.

In government agencies, as in government departments themselves, employees are well advised to pay for their own alcohol and entertainment, lest they be relieved of their duties, with just cause. Still, one cannot help feeling that the government of Dalton McGuinty has found it convenient to target the OLG on this issue, while overlooking its sad and sorry performance with respect to questionable pay-outs in winning tickets to insiders.

The recent fiasco relating to eHealth Ontario where there was a truly egregious waste of taxpayer funding in a failed and inadequately monitored enterprise appears to have made Premier McGuinty more nervously aware of his opponents' charges and his own lack of due diligence. So heads rolled.