It
has been called Gordon Campbell’s last bad decision — the massive
reorganization of the Crown resource and land use ministries, launched
just 10 days before he announced that he would be stepping down as
premier.

The “re-org,” as it is known in bureaucratic parlance,
should be sharing the last/worst legacy status with the reckless cut to
income taxes that Campbell announced just one week before throwing in
the towel.

Except he and the B.C. Liberals pulled back on that
last desperate attempt to curry favour with taxpayers, conceding that
it would be unwise to restrict the fiscal options of the next premier
to the tune of $2 billion over the next three years.

They
declined to extend that logic to the reorganization, never mind that it
will fetter the next premier no less than the tax cut.

“Well,
that’s something we’ve been working on for some time,” said Campbell,
when my Sun colleague Jonathan Fowlie asked recently why the re-org
wasn’t being put on hold. “We had a long discussion about how we were
going to implement that and I think it’s going to be very effective,
both in terms of the economy and better service for the public.”

In spite of what the premier says, the “we” in that sentence is very much in dispute.

Read full Vaughn Palmer Vancouver Sun article here