As the Legislative Assembly Management Committee moves to end decades of secrecy and be more fiscally accountable, it has hit a snag.
NDP MLA Shane Simpson who sits on the committee says the move to suddenly become more open has raised some privacy concerns.
“The Privacy Commissioner has some issues about releasing of information and how that might affect the staff in a constituency office in terms of their rights to privacy and they are resolvable there is no question about it but then we need to solve that because the Privacy Commissioner raised that issue when we were having this conversation about opening up those offices.”
Simpson says there is a tentative committee meeting planned for the end of August to hash out how detailed MLA expenses will be when they are eventually posted online.
“We are trying to open this thing up as much as we can and I am hoping the meeting that is tentatively planned for the end of August the direction to the clerk is come back and tell us what we are looking at here and how it works.”
Simpson warns people eagerly anticipating those MLA expenses not to get their expectations up.
“MLA expenses really cover travel, accomodation, plus what you get for being in the capitol city when we are sitting or you are there on business, and what you spend..get to do with your credit card and the things that you claim in addition to that, per diems those kind of things, I think people once they see the details of this there is very little on peoples forms.”
The legislative committee is working to address a disasterous Auditor General’s report saying the legislative finances are a mess.
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