The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A TOP lawyer found that House of Assembly Speaker Dr Kendal Major’s recent ruling on the Public Accounts Committee’s attempts to investigate the Urban Renewal Small Home Repairs project is based on advice that contains “rank nonsense,” “limp” reasoning and “tortured logic.”

Michael Scott’s legal opinion is the latest development in the matter as the PAC continues its fight to interview Urban Renewal Co-Chairs Algernon Allen and Cynthia “Mother” Pratt about the project’s finances following Auditor General Terrance Bastian’s scathing report which found a litany of concerns and weaknesses related to the project’s management and expenditure.

The legal opinion was delivered to Dr Major on Tuesday.

Expressing a viewpoint trumpeted by FNM parliamentarians, Mr Scott criticised the fact that Dr Major accepted legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General on the matter, suggesting that this constitutes a conflict.

He said he would have expected Dr Major to obtain advice from “the private Bar in order to maintain the dignity of the House (of Assembly) and the separation of powers inhered to our system.”

Dr Major has said that he made his ruling after considering advice from a variety of sources and not just from the Office of the Attorney General.

Mr Scott said the question Dr Major must ask is not whether the PAC is confined to examining documents that have been audited and tabled in the House, but what is the jurisdiction of the PAC.

“The jurisdiction of PAC is set out under Rule 17 (1) of the 2005 Rules and encompasses four disjunctive heads. Rule 17 (1)(a) assigns to PAC the duty of examining the annual budget appropriations approved by the House and voted on every year in May pursuant to Rule 78 of the Rules…on the Speaker’s test (the) PAC is on safe ground (to investigate the matter) because the material on which it seeks to investigate the URC is already before the House. . .”

Mr Scott also argued that there is no limit to the PAC’s ability to call witnesses to testify given its responsibility to examine the way public money is used to ensure that extravagance and waste are minimised.

Almost a month ago Dr Major ordered the PAC to “stay its hand” from investigating the matter after receiving advice from the Office of the Attorney General and other sources which argued that the PAC cannot send for persons, papers and records if a House of Assembly resolution does not permit it to.

Dr Major also ruled that the PAC could not focus on the audit because it had not been tabled in Parliament yet.

The audit in question found, in part, that payments to 11 contractors for more than $170,000 worth of work for small home repairs was “not completed or done”.

The report also noted that there was no competitive bidding for the home repairs contracts and the contractors were not required to have proof of all-risk insurance.

In April, after the audit was leaked to the media, both co-chairs refused to appear before the PAC for an arranged meeting. The co-chairs said the notice of the meeting was not reasonable.

However, in a letter sent to the PAC, they went on to say that another reason was that “it is clear to us that the purported report of the auditor general will necessarily be within the focus of the Public Accounts Committee”. They threatened not to appear before the PAC at a later date if the audit remains a topic of questioning.

Mr Chipman has since said the PAC will continue its work on Urban Renewal despite the Speaker’s ruling.