Adios, Dana Hayden.

Bob Mackin, the dedicated watchdog of the billion-dollar PavCo empire, notes on his blog that the Crown Corporation’s interim CEO, Dana Hayden, will leave her post at the end of this month.

What was Hayden’s legacy? Well, big expenses, for one thing… Last May, we posted the following:

In 2011/12, Dana Hayden was a deputy minister in the B.C. government, pulling down $271,336. Today, she works at PavCo as the CEO and president. We don’t know her salary yet, but her predecessor made more than half a million bucks the year before, so Dana is doing okay.

Her expenses, however, are through the roof.

From September through February, taxpayers paid $2,200 a month for her accommodation rent (p. 1-2), along with thousands more in per-diems. We even paid for her parking at Victoria Airport ($387 from Oct. 18 to Dec. 6, according to p. 3, and $270 from Dec. 12 to Feb. 14, according to p. 1) so she could fly over and work in Vancouver.

In August, she charged taxpayers $3,505.70 in accommodations, per-diems, and parking (p. 4). Plus there are thousands more in flights between Vancouver and Victoria. Not a terribly auspicious start to Hayden’s PavCo career.

At the time, Mackin dug into our documents and unearthed even more:

CEO Dana Hayden bills taxpayers $2,200 a month for her Vancouver accommodation and spent $50 on fuel to travel to Langley to meet with PavCo chair and Langley City Mayor Peter Fassbender (the Surrey-Fleetwood Liberal MLA-elect).

Fassbender’s city hall claims to be environmentally sustainable. Instead of using a phone or Skype, Hayden drove all the way to Langley. 

In September 2012, when Coal Harbour neighbours were meeting with PavCo officials to complain about floatplane noise and fumes, Hayden was commuting to Victoria. 

“Harbour Air” Hayden’s expense report shows flights on Sept. 10, 13, 17, 20, 24 and 27. The first three were for $160.82 each and the other three $168.32 each.

I’d like to hope that Hayden’s replacement, Ken Cretney, will be more frugal with our tax dollars, but judging by his record, that seems unlikely. The more things change at PavCo, the more they stay the same, it seems.