TransLink: Don't go there. This is a warning to all politicians.
The regional transit authority is a political trap. It nailed Mayor Gregor Robertson back in 2007 when he got caught without a two-zone ticket. And this month, both NDP leader Adrian Dix and Premier Christy Clark were embarrassed because of TransLink encounters. That was before the transit authority put transportation minister Blair Lekstrom and the Liberals on the spot.
Dix, in a similar fix to the one Robertson found himself, failed to produce a ticket and was given a warning notice by transit cops. That information got leaked to the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Sun three weeks later and, voila, a headline: "NDP Leader Adrian Dix caught on SkyTrain without a ticket." All of a sudden we had "Fair-gate."
And, with that, there was reason enough to dial back to the days when-in case you forgot-Dix worked for former premier Glen Clark and fabricated and backdated a memo to cover his boss's butt in the midst of a casino licensing scandal.
The week before Dix was being humiliated, it was our premier's turn. As she kicked off two byelection campaigns in the region's north east, a Liberal Party flyer shouted: "Christy got it done." The "it" in this case was TransLink's Evergreen Line.
Clark also said that not only would there be an audit of TransLink, but that audit would produce the $30 million "that we are going to find" to fill the funding gap for the Evergreen Line.
Pundits parsed the pronouncements for their probity only to find_. well, here's what the Globe and Mail's Robert Matas noted about "it." "Even by loose standards for political spin, the audacity in giving Ms. Clark credit for moving the project forward is stunning."
Remember, Clark is the one who just about killed the funding for the Evergreen Line. She backtracked twice on the carbon tax and once on the deal carefully worked out by Lekstrom and the region's mayors to raise TransLink revenue by increasing gas tax by two cents a litre. She said it would make "life less affordable for people." Two days later-after Lekstrom sorted her out-she changed her mind.
Last week, we saw more of Clark's contortions. After her byelection announcement, Clark's media manager had to explain that the premier misspoke. The $30 million funding gap wasn't for the Evergreen Line at all-it was for other TransLink projects.
As for the audit, who knows how much can be squeezed out of TransLink? Besides, the audit won't even start until the fall.
Meanwhile, there's the not insignificant TransLink matter that blew up this week. It seems that while about 64,000 fines were handed out last year at $173 a piece for folks who were found to have failed to pay their fare, only about 10 per cent actually paid the penalty. TransLink cops hand out the tickets. ICBC collects the fines. But nobody has the authority to go after the 90 per cent who fail to fork over their dough. That amounts to about $10 million a year that would otherwise flow into the provincial treasury.
While this story broke this week, it was old news in Victoria. Lekstrom may say it is "the first time it has been brought to my attention." But the fact is TransLink's board has been raising the issue privately with the province for years. In 2007, TransLink's auditors, PWC, clearly outlined the matter in a report that would have been available to Lekstrom's predecessor Kevin Falcon.
Lekstrom may now want to play the hero by adding muscle to the fine collection, but he has also found himself trapped in a way by TransLink.
TransLink says it wants all the money from those fines to come to them. After all, it will help fill that $30 million funding gap. The provincial NDP and Tories agree. And guess what? They are making it an issue in the upcoming byelections.
