PLP hypocrites blind to the truth about consultants

Many Bermudians must feel as disturbed as I do about what seems to be the Opposition Progressive Labour Party’s hypocrisy over the use of consultants in Government.  

Shadow Finance Minister David Burt and others have criticized the Government for misleading Bermuda in this area, and have been busy trying to give the impression that the OBA has increased, not decreased their number. 

That’s not correct. My conversations with Ministers and others give me confidence that the Government will soon be able to say that the One Bermuda Alliance is using fewer consultants, and paying less for them than it did under the PLP.   

In the Cabinet Office, for example, I expect the Government can report that the total number of consultants is six — a Chief of Staff, an Office Manager, a Press Secretary, a Driver, an Advisor, and a Washington Lobbyist.

This is a reduction from the consultancy staffing of former Premier Ewart Brown, who had ten — a Chief of Staff, an Office Manager, a Press Secretary, a Driver, a Coordinator (who was the present Opposition Leader, Marc Bean), a Consultant for the Big Conversation (Rolfe Commissiong), a Writer, two Washington lobbyists and an Assistant to the Premier. Former Premier Paula Cox had nine consultants working for her in the Cabinet Office.

Our Finance Minister, Bob Richards, recently was able to dispose of a Finance Ministry consultant seconded from an accounting firm who cost $500,000 a year. Similar stories can be told, on a smaller scale, in other areas of the government.  I’ll leave it to the Government to provide details.

We must not forget that the reason we are in this situation is the PLP’s extraordinary fiscal excesses over 14 years of governance.  Consultants, once rare, became commonplace. The civil service, meanwhile, swelled until it had become the largest employer in Bermuda. Proper controls over spending in the government became lost in the shuffle.  

From the Bermuda Housing Corporation scandal during Dame Jennifer Smith’s regime to the hiring of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Bermuda Land Development Company to do what amounted to their own work for a bloated fee, the PLP’s use of public money became an embarrassment. 

The Government’s excesses became Police matters on more than one occasion. Fundamental weaknesses in our laws concerning corruption were exposed, meaning that wrongdoers were almost never punished.

The Finance Minister revealed in the House of Assembly earlier this month that over the years, several prominent PLP figures had been given no-bid contracts to do work for the Government. 

I look forward to the day when we are able to announce a comprehensive list of these arrangements, called “sweetheart contracts” elsewhere, because they are awarded to friends of the government largely in secret. 

The PLP in Opposition has protested these revelations in strong terms, saying the Finance Minister was using “gutter politics” and “throwing red meat” to OBA supporters.   

I, for one, consider this kind of information essential to a properly-informed Bermuda.  It may be embarrassing to the PLP, but it is hardly gutter politics to any Government that is truly committed to being transparent and responsible in matters that concern the spending of the public’s money. 

I want to assure the public that the OBA is working to set a new course on governance, trusting in ourselves and the civil service to govern, working hard to steer clear of the waste and abuse that characterised the last years of the PLP government.  

I acknowledge that the PLP can take credit for having done some good things for Bermuda.  But they also did many harmful things. They should accept responsibility for those actions and stop trying to oppose for the sake of opposing. Our politics will be the better for it. n

Thad Hollis is chairman of the One Bermuda Alliance.