Wreck of the superboard fitzgerald

Don Braid: Health superboard raises wreck goodwill

By Don Braid, Calgary Herald


March 31, 2009 7:06

The raises for Alberta's health superboard members aren't just appalling in their symbolism, they look sneaky, too.
Most board members have been getting higher payments since last Dec. 1.
Nobody said a thing. There was no announcement from either the board or the government.
Maybe they worried they'd look like the overstuffed regional executives they fired last year.
They'd be correct.
Last week the superboard members went to Red Deer for one of their brief, taciturn efforts to imitate public disclosure.
At these meetings, they act like monks who only break silence to sing the hallelujah chorus.
A brief agenda item mentioned compensation and honoraria.
It appeared to signal a blanket policy, not an actual raise.
But a raise was behind it; one that most board members had been collecting for three months.
The news only came out because reporters smelled a rat that seemed to be lighting cigars with public money.
Then the excuses began.
Health Minister Ron Liepert made the decision, said Ken Hughes, the board chairman
The government said Hughes proposed the raises. Then that Liepert asked Hughes to propose them. Who knows?
Now I hear that board members are feeling hung out to dry.
They're undeniably well-intentioned. At least one member donates all her health board payments to charity.
But the way this was handled has an eerily familiar bad odour.
The government behaved the same way last spring when ministers gave themselves 34 per cent raises behind closed doors.
The only sign anything had happened was a brief order-in-council that said: "Makes the MLA remuneration order."
Similarly, the health board mentioned remuneration without any detail. In these circles, you hear that $50,000 for a part-time board member, and $75,000 for the chairman isn't that much. Raises of 25 per cent, therefore, are fairly trivial.
They should tell it to the hundreds of engineers who lined up last week looking for jobs. Or the minimum-wage kids and the parents worried about mortgage payments.
Most of all, they should tell it to the patients who are seeing big increases in waiting times for surgeries and emergency ward help.
That's the crux of the problem with these raises.
It is fundamentally wrong for anybody in public life to take more money for doing a worse job.
But these people have bagged a pay hike at the very moment the system is hitting the wall.
Since the new board took over last May, health care has deteriorated sharply.
Now the honeymoon is over. Many Albertans, after months of neutral watchfulness, want results rather than raises.
But what do we hear from Liepert? The public might not see concrete improvements until the third year of reform.
Before, Liepert has always said we could expect some gains in 2009.
Now the public will have to wait until 2010.
Well, maybe that's realistic, but if it is, the superboard members should wait for their raises, too.
In the past few weeks we've heard about massive bonuses for civil servants and ATB Financial officials.
The ship of state, still under boom-time sail, is slow to alter course.
But it is changing. Bonuses will be suspended for this year and next. MLAs and political staff won't get their cost-of-living raises.
In most areas, the government finally realizes that public sector pay hikes are toxic assets in these times.
Liepert didn't get it, though, and the health board never saw the point in disclosing the raises.
As a result, they've blown the public's goodwill in just two weeks.
dbraid@theherald.canwest.com
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