Cornies: How do public-sector executives lose touch with their true purpose?

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It’s one of the toughest tricks to master for leaders and boards in the charitable or public-service sectors – working for donors or taxpayers without conforming to private-sector habits.

It means staying focused on who is paying the bills and receiving services.

It means keeping attuned to a supporting constituency without going tone deaf.

It means spurning comparisons to executives in similar private-sector jobs and what some of their perks might be.

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It means tamping down notions of entitlement and from time to time that will feel like a sacrifice.

It’s all part of a mindset that seems to have eluded leaders at the centre of three spending scandals that have riled London taxpayers in recent months.

At the Thames Valley District school board, the province launched a probe after 18 senior administrators took part in a $38,000 retreat at the hotel at Toronto’s Rogers Centre (the Blue Jays were playing all three days). Consequently, the director of education is on paid leave (his salary in 2023 was $326,000) as his predecessor takes charge on an interim basis.

Meanwhile, the school board is running a large deficit, teaching positions have been cut and student field trips have been cancelled. This week, teachers and department heads raised the alarm that basic classroom supplies are being stretched paper thin.

The scandal deserves careful parsing.

It should be said that a three-day retreat for board administrators in August, just days ahead of a new school year, is a wise use of limited time and modest resources. Getting senior administrators on the same page, especially in a board as geographically and culturally diverse as TVDSB, is smart — provided the agenda concerns new educational approaches, implementing new procedures, or introducing other measures to ensure student success and provide a good working environment for staff.

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It should not need to be said that the choice of a posh Toronto hotel as a setting for such a meeting, with some attendees making the two-hour trip aboard Via Rail’s business class, was imprudent. There are other venues that could have hosted the retreat at a fraction of the cost.

This is where so many public-sector executives lose touch with their purpose: to serve the public. When salaries rise to some figure north of $200,000, whether they be in education, health care or law enforcement, some seem to lose touch with that mission.

They glance sideways at comparable organizations and their acquaintances in the private sector. There, retreats or company-wide meetings in Las Vegas, Cancún or Casablanca are not uncommon and salaries are substantially higher.

Company presidents and chief executives are responsible for justifying those expenses only to owners or shareholders. Public service is just that and always should be. It demands a more acute sense of ethical obligation and fiduciary duty to taxpayers or, in the case of charities and non-profits, to donors and supporters.

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At London Health Sciences Centre, where administrative structures and executive compensation seem to have run amok in recent years, interim chief executive David Musyj has been working since May to reform the institution. The hospital’s board of directors resigned last month, following a third-party review that found concerns regarding governance, operations, management and financial issues.

The turmoil at the hospital goes at least as far back as the tenure of former chief executive Dr. Paul Woods, who was dismissed by the board in January 2021, when it was revealed he made repeated visits to the United States at a time when pandemic lockdowns limited such travel. Woods subsequently settled his lawsuit against the LHSC board for an undisclosed amount. He is now the chief executive of a hospital in Mississauga.

Woods’ replacement at LHSC, Jackie Schleifer Taylor, went on medical leave in November 2023, soon after it was revealed that she planned to spend $470,000 on travel for senior executives to Portugal, the Middle East and Australia. Schleifer Taylor’s salary, not including taxable benefits, amounted to about $521,000 in 2021, $718,000 in 2022, and $786,000 in 2023. She left the hospital in June.

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At London Police Service, inflated salaries aren’t as big a problem as are the perceptions left by recent revelations that it paid a public relations firm about $100,000 to sell its current budget to the city and taxpayers.

The use of taxpayer dollars to sell the biggest budget ask in London police history to city council, all in the pursuit of more taxpayer dollars, left a sour note. As a campaign, it succeeded. As a trust-building exercise, it flopped.

Just as surely as we need savvy businesspeople or imaginative entrepreneurs, we need public servants with instincts for duty, trust, prudence and stewardship. We also need them to have something approaching 20-20 foresight, rather than 20-20 hindsight.

Larry Cornies is a London-based journalist. cornies@gmail.com

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