The decision by the committee that oversees the legislature's muddled books to hold public meetings is a baby step on the long road to restoring public confidence in Victoria's accounting. It needs to go much, much further.
Last week, B.C.'s Auditor General John Doyle released a scathing report saying accounting for the legislature's $70 million annual budget is such a mess he couldn't tell if any money is missing. The situation is shocking.
Problems included $1.3 billion in transactions that were improperly recorded, payment of MLAs' travel expenses without receipts and a $133 million gap between what was on the books and what was in the bank account.
And there are no financial statements for the legislature - a basic requirement of almost any public group from the lowliest of non-profit societies on up.
To make matters worse, the Auditor General said he'd first raised concerns about the issue five years ago - and had met with very little response.
The prevailing attitude among elected officials seems to have been that they were immune to the accountability standards expected and imposed on others. While provincial budgets have been slashed in the name of belt-tightening, MLAs weren't concerned about keeping tabs on spending closer to home.
NDP house leader John Horgan summed it up best when he described the damning report as "an embarrassment for all members of the legislature."
Now it's time to fix it. The legislature's books must be made public, and all its business conducted in the open from now on. This should be a minimum requirement.
