Posts Tagged ‘government’

No Comment on Local Government Election Reform

Friday, February 5th, 2010

All provincial and federal public servants are supposed to be non-partisan during work hours. Most of them are free to do partisan activity in their free time. We’ve come a long way since 1960 when Dave Barrett had to get special permission to run, and even longer since 1899 when public servants weren’t allowed to vote in BC. I happen to be in one of the few positions that has a higher burden of non-partisanship (although that hasn’t been tested in court, as far as I know): I am expected to remain non-partisan in my private life.

The members of the Local Government Elections Task Force were all appointed by Cabinet. Apparently some people[who?] consider the Task Force to have a partisan slant. To maintain my squeaky-clean image, my employer asked me to remove my personal opinions from my post on the Task Force.

The impact of social media on the political status of public servants is an active area of research. Requests for interviews with me can be left in the comments.

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New or Repaired Bridge, No Money Down!

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

The City of Victoria council now has three options for the Johnson Street Bridge:

  1. hold a referendum
  2. decide not to replace the bridge
  3. get the money somewhere else

I’m not going to speculate on the political cost, but there’s an obvious way to do #3: a design-build-finance-operate public-private partnership. Instead of just constructing a bridge with government money, the construction partner borrows the money on the private market and the government promises to pay them fee over the lifetime of the contract. These partnerships make the most sense when there is a revenue risk, such as a toll.

The Golden Ears Bridge on the Fraser River is the obvious precedent. The Golden Crossing Group is paid a fixed fee and tolls go to Translink (I suspect a private partner would demand power to set the toll if it were their source of revenue). The contract includes things like safety bonuses, maintenance standards and availability guarantees.

The P3 idea was first floated, to my knowledge, by Victoria Vision. Putting a toll on the bridge would solve the complaint of some Victoria residents that they’re paying for a bridge used mostly by people living in eastern municipalities. The BC Liberals like P3s, so the project might attract some money from the provincial government.

I’d like to see a P3 request written generally enough to get both refurbish and rebuild proposals, which can then be compared based on hard, fixed costs. This can be done by specifying a pay scale for the hand-back condition of the bridge at the end of the contract: the company gets a pay-out based on years of life left.

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What is BC Ferries?

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

BC Ferries is one of the key pieces of infrastructure in BC. It used to be a Crown corporation. Now it’s…something else. “Independently-operated public corporation”, let’s say.

I think very few people know how BC Ferries is structured despite the importance of the service. I had the opportunity to do an assignment on BC Ferries so now I can explain it to you:

BC Ferries Structure

BC Ferry Services Inc (BCFS) owns the ferries, leases the terminals (from the province) and employs the unionized workers that run them. BCFS has a contract with the Ministry of Transportation that includes subsidies for some of the routes. BCFS has issued some bonds that are mostly held by national banks – as far as I can tell, there are no covenants on those bonds that give the holders control of BCFS.

Ferry ticket prices are set by the BC Ferry Commission, which is an independent statutory office appointed by the Legislative Assembly. (So if you think prices are too high, write your MLA.)

The board of BCFS is mostly members of the BC Ferry Authority (BCFA), which is a public partnership. The BCFA is appointed as follows:

  • 4 by coastal regional districts
  • 2 by Cabinet
  • 1 by the BC Ferry & Marine Workers’ Union
  • 2 by the previous directors of the BCFA

I think the point of having the two-layer BCFA-BCFS board is to prevent political meddling and accountability but mostly to make BCFS independent enough to secure its own bonds. The other value of independence is that the only constraints on BC Ferries is the contract. (If you don’t like the terms of the contract, write the Minister of Transportation.)

The two big questions I have are:

  • What principles is the BCFS board operating under? Maximizing shareholder value doesn’t make sense.
  • How do the banks and the markets see the reality of this whole thing? How would you create a model for the value of the bonds?

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School’s In Session

Friday, September 11th, 2009

I’m taking two online university courses this term while I work full time:

  • Introduction to Public Administration
  • Public Sector Management

I’ll probably write blog posts less often. I am keeping an eye out for course content that’s worth sharing, as I have done in the past.

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The Government Needs Critical Accounting

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

The CCPA tried to measure how much we benefit from public service. But they noted that the biggest problem with their study is that actually the only data available is to measure the cost of public services consumed by households. Government cannot use the market theory of value because the things government produces (mostly as a monopoly) are not traded in markets; instead, government accountants use the cost-of-production theory of value.

Cost theories of value have been rejected by neoclassical economics. Not having any way of measuring the value besides the cost means that cost-benefit analysis is meaningless. So when business people look at government services they see them as at most zero net benefit.

This is similar to the problem of measuring government’s success by changes in gross domestic product (GDP). Government needs critical accounting more desperately than the private sector does.

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What Your Country Can Do for You

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Do taxes redistribute wealth from hard-workers to moochers or pay for public services that the wealthy disproportionately consume (eg: bigger target of property crime, children more likely to go to university, etc.)? The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has attempted to measure how much Canadians benefit from public services.

The CCPA says 82% of public service consumption is measurable by household; only 18% is indivisible things like environmental protection and national defense. People in households that make more than $50k/year all get around $15k/year (households that make less get significant transfer payments). Wealthier households tend to have more people in them, so they consume more public services at the household level.

Here’s the most detailed table the report provides for figuring out how much you’re getting:

% of pop per capita benefit
Single senior 4% $25,386
Childless single 10% $21,929
Senior couple 12% $21,199
Single parent 6% $20,416
Childless couple 15% $15,407
Empty-nester couple 11% $14,758
Family 41% $13,332
Other household 2% $16,740
Total 100% $16,527

Multiply by the number of people in your household. Then subtract your total personal taxes from the Fraser Institute’s calculator. (I figure the left-wing bias of the CCPA will cancel out the right-wing bias of the Fraser Institute.) If you have a surplus, vote for more taxes; if you have a deficit, vote for tax cuts.

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Once Upon a Time There Was This Policy…

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

There are three layers of instruction and direction given to public servants: legislation, policy and procedure. Narratives have a long history in legislation, and are often used something like this:

  1. A journalist writes a human interest story about a member of a class of wronged people. Alternately, a lawyer finds a named plaintiff to represent a class in a class action lawsuit.
  2. Legislative committees invite non-expert “witnesses” to tell personal narratives (I get the impression that Congressional committees do this more than House of Commons/Legislative Assembly committees but here’s an example).
  3. Bills get written and passed that are either explicitly eponymous or coined so by journalists (eg: Grant’s Law).

You could say that politicians and journalists are into narratives because those professions are all about image. But policy analysts don’t use narratives, which I think is neglecting a powerful tool. The first significant move in this direction that I know about is the column “Narrative Matters” in the health policy journal Health Affairs. It makes sense that narratives would first be used in “tissue” policy, but I believe that sooner or later there’ll be policy narratives about small businesses, logging licenses and tax law.

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