The Editor,
Last week my MLA for Richmond East, Linda Reid, was featured on the front page of The Vancouver Sun. As a constituent, I am embarrassed by this.
If you missed it, Reid’s photo was front and centre because of the involvement of the RCMP and now the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) in investigating renovations completed on Reid’s Garden City constituency office in 2013.
This is not the first time I have been embarrassed by my MLA’s free spending ways on the taxpayers dime. Since 2013, Reid has been cited not once, not twice, not three times but four times for questionable spending of the taxpayers dime.
First there was the embarrassment of a first-class trip to Kenya for herself and her husband (which prompted the government to look into it’s travel practices), then there was the embarrassment related to expenses for the redecoration of the MLA lounge in the Legislature (remember the now defunct $700 muffin rack?). Those expenses were followed by an embarrassing expenditure of $16,000 to fly and house Reid’s Richmond-based campaign manager back and forth to Victoria (which prompted Reid to announce she won’t be doing this anymore) and finally, the penultimate embarrassment of the involvement of the RCMP in security upgrades to Reid’s constituency office, to the tune of $79,000 (exactly how was her kitchenette and washroom made more secure during these renovations?).
It’s time for Reid to drop her “no comment” refrain, sit down with one of the reporters (she has many to choose from) who have been asking her to comment on her actions, and come clean. It’s the very least that I, as a constituent embarrassed by her free-spending ways, deserves.
Sharon Hales
Richmond
