The Best Of The Dobranos.....

.....In Which The Capos Cover Their Tracks

(please see updates at bottom)

NeverWroteItDown
NothingEverHappenedVille


Here's a great bit of spade work by the The Tyee's Stanley Tromp, who is fast making FOI's (or the lack thereof in B.C.) his life's obsession:

Meanwhile, the insidious shift towards "oral government" is growing. E-mails must be preserved and accessible under FOI laws. A debate is looming over Blackberry records. Yet the premier's multi-tasking assistant Ken Dobell startled an FOI conference in 2003 by announcing frankly that "I delete my email all the time as fast as I can." (Privacy commissioner David) Loukidelis later reprimanded Dobell for publicly admitting he avoids taking notes so they aren't uncovered by reporters under FOI.

Except that...... when the Capos went to meetings sometimes real ink-on-paper minutes were taken.

And sometimes unearthing those minutes can help one follow the money.

Or, in one important case at least, the suggestion of money to come sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Which turned out to be a future in which one of the biggest of the Capos would become a contented consultant using that very same suggested money that ultimately became the real thing.

Stay tuned......


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And fortunately, despite their best efforts in sophisticated track covering, most actual contracts, even those of the deep-cover Dobrano kind, are still made in writing. Can't wait to see who signed this one.
Update #1: Mr. Tromp has the latest in his series of B.C. government secrecy pieces up in the Tyee today in which he deals with the dreaded 'Section 13' of our increasingly toothless FOI tiger de papier. The whole series, which you can access via links on his latest, is latest truly is a 'Must Read Anti-TeeVee for all of B.C.'
Update #2: Unlike most of his straight/journo print work, Sean Holman rarely takes his tongue out of his cheek when he writes his posts online at PublicEye. Interestingly, that appendage is most definitely nowhere to be found in today's post from Mr. Holman regarding The Dobranos' continuing claims of transparency and openness. It's another piece of worth calling a 'must read', and it is most definitely NOT gossip.

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