A year later, the law has not been put on the books and no commencement date has been given.  There is no sign of “freedom of information act” preparation in any part of Government.

The PLP wants to be able to talk about PATI, but doesn’t want to comply with it.  While Bermuda has hummed, hawed and delayed, other countries have created their laws, implemented them, and even had time to improve them based on experience.

This leaves me wondering.  After 12 years in power are the PLP still this bad at leading Government?  Or do they have 12 years of constant circus they’d rather hide from PATI?

The media faithfully reported last week that the Premier had tabled a “Good Governance Act” in the House.  Terrific!  It took a fair amount of scrounging around for me to get a copy.  In this day, it should not be that way.

I support the changes in the Good Governance Act 2011.  They are needed.  But in many respects, this law is a sheep in wolf’s clothing.  It is not so much a Good Governance Act – drawing a line in the sand about Bermuda’s commitment to a clean, transparent, and accountable government – than it is a series of amendments fixing problems in other legislation.  Like the “Public Accountability Act” of a few weeks ago (which actually deals with supervising audits of EU-listed companies), it carries a grand title perhaps hoping to put some sheen on Government’s lacklustre performance in an election runup.

The Good Governance Act does the following:

• It establishes an Office of Public Management and Procurement.  This is a no-brainer.  It is mind-boggling that an organisation whose annual budget has doubled in recent years to well over $1 billion dollars does not have such an entity.  The lack of a coordinated procurement disciple explains a lot of the problems we have.  This Act merely creates the entity;  we’ll need to wait to see the underlying regulations and enforcement to see if it actually improves governance.  (Sorry, I am skeptical.  In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of new departments that seem to meander without defining and nailing the problems they were intended to address.)
• It also creates an offense for those involved ivolved in procurement who do not disclose interests they may have in the bidders.
• It amends various laws to punish Government employees who alter, erase, destroy, or conceal documents from the Government Auditor, Internal Auditor, or new Procurement Office.  It is truly comforting to know that this is a problem.
• It creates basic whistleblower protections for civil servants who report a “criminal breach or breach of any statutory obligation” by their employer or another employee.  I support this “band aid” but believe the scope of the whistleblower law should be dramatically expanded.  It should cover all organisations, not just Government.  It should be expanded to include other areas like gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority, or a substantial danger to public health or safety.  And it should allow disclosure, in some circumstances, to parties outside the list of “all in the family” Government watchdogs.

Again, I support these amendments.  They are a good starting point … but they do not go far enough.  The Act is a band-aid with a big name.

We do need to clean up details like this in our governance.   But we also need:

• To implement PATI, what are we waiting for?
• To further develop the whistleblower protections
•  To implement a proper anti-corruption law

The issue of good governance laws was raised with the Overseas Territories by the UK FCO in their 1999 Partnership white paper.  It was reiterated in a followup in 2006.  And in 2007, Bermuda (as part of the Overseas Territories Consultative Council) agreed to extend the UN Convention Against Corruption “at the earliest opportunity.”

Five years later, still nothing’s been done … despite (or perhaps because of) the constant circus and ethical eruptions that have characterised our little political elite.

I’m all in favour of this.

But we need to go a step further than encouraging good governance.  We need to define what is bad behaviour as well.  Let’s get “unethical but not illegal” out of the Bermuda political lexicon.

We need anti-corruption legislation.

And exercise financial oversight over public expenditures?  Well.  The facts speak for themselves:  $1,000,000,000 in the hole and rising fast.

Bermuda has had some interesting ethics situations over the past decade … and our laws are ill-suited to deal with them.  I posted on the subject in 2009 twice and in 2010.

Guess what?  Nothing has happened still. It’s not even on the agenda.

Bermuda cultivates “grey areas” in our laws in the hope they lead to flexibility.  But the flip side is that those grey areas can create uncertainty or breed favouritism which is hated by citizens and business alike … and may feed the “unethical but not illegal” situations that challenge our public life.

The OECD and international transparency groups have been pushing the UK to make sure the Overseas Territories adopt the international conventions against bribery.  And our once-rivals, the Cayman Islands moved quickly  to pass and implement their own anti-corruption law.

Now the new UK Bribery Act kicks into gear in July.  Here’ some interesting tidbits:

• Any company that has a UK office, employs UK citizens, or provides any services to a UK organisation will be subject to the act.
• The UK also claims jurisdiction over offenses committed by British Overseas Territories citizens even if conducted outside the UK.

What have the Brits done for us lately?  LOL, apparently doing the job our own Parliament is too fat and complacent to bother with!

Bermuda should introduce its own law as a priority.  And it is should implement it (unlike PATI, which a year after passage is mouldering unimplemented in some civil service backwater).

In 2009 the paper reported that Government was troubled by a BIU filing covering the years 1999-2002 for insufficient detail as it rolled that 4 year span into one jumble.  Now, Government seems willing to allow them to repeat the trick with one bulk filing covering 2003-2009!

Neither Government nor the Union are fulfilling their duty under the law, and certainly not their duty to union members.  They are also failing the Bermudian public, which financed the Union by writing off its multimillion dollar debt from the Berkeley Institute debacle.

In business, any company that tried to pull obfuscation like this would be an instant pariah.  Vague and evasive accounting implies trouble.

Contrast this with the US, where the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) has responsibility “to ensure certain basic standards of democracy and fiscal responsibility in labour organisations”.  Full reporting on American unions’ financial standing, expenditures, bylaws, and elections is available on the internet at http://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/rrlo/lmrda.htm

Unions provide an important public service and must be visibly accountable.

However, the nascent law remains on ice and no timetable has been provided for implementation.

And I wouldn’t get your hopes up either.  I am told that this year’s budget includes a pittance for PATI.

Looks like they reset the dial again.  Is PATI a real commitment to transparency and accountability … or just a cyncial PR play?  In the same time that Bermuda has been humming and hawing, the Cayman Islands developed a law, implemented it, and now have several years of experience under their belt.

Waiting for PATI:  8 years and counting.

This, of course, overlooks the fact that she was Minister of Finance throughout much of this mess making.

So when Minister Cox says that her solutions for Government will be based on “reform and recalibration” I cringe a little … because the Bermuda Government has not been very good at this.

Witness the new audit report (PDF) released today … where the reform and reengineering of TCD is revealed to have cost a heck of a lot more than anticipated to implement, has the predictable murk surrounding contracts and political interference, did not comply with Government’s financial instructions, and resulted in no clear savings in personnel or operating costs.

I agree that it is a lot more pleasant to get through TCD these days … but wow that’s a lot of money.

I’m not sure we can afford any more reform like that.

One has to wonder if this is about reform at all.  I wonder if the costly advice was really about how to slide through the takeover, rather than how genuine reform might be achieved.  That theory is certainly supported by the draft law:  it’s clear to me there is little public support for taking over the corporations, and the law seems to seek to crush them financially as an alternative.  Very tricky … but we’ve come to expect that, haven’t we?

It is being shoved through late in the Parliamentary session where, through poor planning, there are so many backlogged bills that they will need to add extra meetings next week.

Finally, let’s question whose priorities are running this country.  The takeover was a late entrant in Dr. Brown’s destructathon.  It gets bullied through like the proverbial shit through a goose.

By contrast, PATI has been an official goal of the PLP for a decade – one that I strongly support and applaud.  The law is written, many consultations have occurred, we’re ready to rock.  But apparently, yet again, there’s no time for it in this Parliamentary session.  They want to claim it without actually having it.  No, there are other prioritie$.

The new forty thieves are at work.

The NYT has an interesting article on India’s popular freedom of information access law pointing out that it may not have made a big dent in corruption, but it has given a powerful tool to citizens to resolve their complaints.

There is, however, a little warning from one of the law’s great supporters:

“But our accountability mechanisms are weak, and transparency has no purpose without accountability.”

I’d like to point out that PATI itself is not the end game;  it is just one step towards increasing the accountability of the budget-busting Bermuda Government.

Times change, and the PAC has unanimously voted to open its meetings to the public.  This is a very positive move.

The PAC is currently chaired by the UBP’s Bob Richards.  Other members include Patricia Gordon-Pamplin (UBP), Lovitta Foggo, Walter Lister, and Patrice Minors (PLP).

Thursday’s meeting is at 2.30 p.m. in the Senate chamber.

The PAC is tasked with reviewing the Government accounts and how they tie into expenditures approved by Parliament.  In general, government PACs are intended to focus on the adequacy of the accounts and on “value for money” rather than to comment on the merits of any particular policy.

In order to reinforce the transparency of this important step forward, the PAC should rapidly establish a website with a description of its duties, the schedule of its meetings as well as minutes, attendance records, and other documents related to its work.

UBP MP John Barritt then posed a question about several outstanding Parliamentary Questions that Government has so far chosen to ignore, relating to the controversial expansion of the Stonington/Coco Reef lease as well as the equally controversial Corporations takeover review.

The PLP frontbench quickly objected that the questions were out of order and the Speaker upheld the objection.

The message seems to be that we may have public access to information when the PLP Government feels like granting it.