Further to spendin’ money

I was talking to my pal Mbrandon8026 ( yes, he does have a name other than Mbrandon8026, but I figure what’s the point of having a pseudonym if nobody addresses you by it ), about David Langtry’s expense reports, as posted on below, and discovered that Mbrandon was way ahead of me – he’d already gotten Langtry’s expenses into a spreadsheet for further analysis. And since the mere mention of the word spreadsheet makes me want to close my eyes and massage my temples, I thought I’d just copy his discovery word-for-word:

It is pretty hard to garner anything from the way that those expenses are laid out, which is part of the reason they are laid out that way on the government site.  If you want to figure out what they mean you have to work at it, because it is not obvious on the face of it.  It just looks odd and high.

 

So, I took David Langtry’s expenses and put them into an Excel Spreadsheet.  Then I sorted them by date using the data sort feature of Excel, and I also used the filter feature to look only at 2008 for example and also to only look at his “Regular Business at Headquarters” expenses.  That gave me a different perspective.  Here’s what I get out of it.  David Langtry has never moved his family to Ottawa.  He commutes only for about 25 weeks of the years, and stays in an Executive apartment or some such, at a cost of about $700 for 4 nights of the week, plus a meal allowance of about $333 for the week, plus air fare and cabs.  It costs us poor taxpayers about $40,000 a year for this guy to commute each year. 

 

That accounted for half of his expenses of $78,030 in 2008.  He then spent $26,323 between 2 trips to Geneva and 1 to Nairobi Kenya on ICC business (Jennifer Lynch is the Chairman of the ICC – she must have been busy that week or needed him to carry her bags.  You can check her expenses on the same dates, Geneva April 4-12 08 and oct 31 – Nov 8, 08, and Nairobi Oct 17 – 24 08), and $3,505 at Network of the Americas in sunny Merida, Mexico.  He seems to have partied hardy at CASHRA 2008 and CASHRA mid year in Niagara on the Lake and Toronto respectively.  The tab on that appears to be close to $4,000 – $5,000.  He mixed his expenses with his “Regular Business at Headquarters” expenses, which is a good way to hide misdeeds from public scrutiny.

 

These folks are not stupid (Well not totally).  They know how to report expenses better than the average guy knows how to break them down.  They don’t plan on a little thing like FOI getting them caught.

Now, that seems a bit strange – after all, why doesn’t Langtry just re-locate to Ottawa, or, alternatively, why doesn’t the CHRC replace him? Surely they could just appoint a replacement; he’s been working for the CHRC since 2006. Although I think the question is raised – the position of Chief Commissioner ( i.e. Jennifer Lynch’s position ) has a time-limit; it’s a finite term. Does this also apply to the Deputy Chief Commissioner – David Langtry’s position? Perhaps that’s why his highly impractical commute has been tolerated for so long.

More on this from Jesse Ferreras.