Getting Byrned.

Disgraced former Progressive Conservative Leader Ed Byrne appeared in court this week for a sentencing hearing stemming from his lead role in the Members Allowance scandal. He'll learn his fate in just over a week from now.

But the agreed statement of facts contained one juicy nugget which should mean at least one of Mr. Byrne's colleagues might be facing another raft of charges, this time for violating Newfoundland's Elections Act.

Check out this snippet from CBC Radio's David Cochrane, who summarized Ed Byrne's week on the Morning Show. (you can download the whole thing here)

"...Byrne used his constituency allowance to pay a guy three thousand dollars for working on a provincial byelection campaign, to cover salary and expenses. Now this person actually did the work. Actually got the money. Got the three thousand dollars..."
"...on top of all that constituency allowances aren't supposed to be used to pay for political expenses and campaign salaries."

Well, that last line may seem like a bit of an understatement - but it's not just the impropriety of spending taxpayer dollars or Members' allowances that's in issue here - it's the illegality of receiving such dollars (or the services they paid for) that's an even bigger problem.

If this contribution of $3,000 wasn't reported in the candidate's financial statements, and if that candidate is now sitting in the House of Assembly, then we now know that at least one of Mr. Byrne's colleagues and a member of Mr. Williams' caucus, not to mention Mr. Williams' Party, is in flagrant contravention of the Elections Act.

We'd be able to check those byelection returns on line, except for some reason, all the ones from before 2005 are conveniently unavailable.

Raise your hands, everyone who still thinks combining the responsibility for "members' interests" with responsibility for enforcing the Elections Act was a good idea.

Keep your hands raised if you think naming a Tory party president to the position was a similarly good idea.

And keep 'em straight up in the air if you honestly believe anyone will ever get investigated or reprimanded for compromising the letter and the spirit of our electoral laws.

I thought so.

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