As debate on the TransLink tax vote heats up, the Yes side threw CEO Ian Jarvis under the bus.
By tossing Jarvis - whose salary had become a symbol of TransLink waste - to the curb, the Yes side hopes to up their chances of success at the ballot box.
The move is presumably meant to signal a new era, where the new tax the Yes side craves won't go to a fat cat's bloated paycheque.
Except of course that it will - two salaries, in fact, instead of one.
Jarvis will continue to be paid more than $420,000 in an "advisory" capacity while a new interim CEO gets $35,000 a month.
Just how those optics will convince anyone that sound financial decisions are around the next corner remains a mystery. In fact, given the timing, it almost looks like an attempt to sabotage the referendum.
While Jarvis was a highly paid executive who presided over a number of bungled projects at TransLink, his departure doesn't change some basic problems.
TransLink is still run by an unelected board that spends public money with little accountability. But the ability to change anything about that board is not on the ballot.
B.C.'s Transportation Minister has said TransLink needs new leadership. He's right - just not in the way he's pitching it.
TransLink is a creation of the province.
To fix it, the province needs to step back and return the board to locally elected officials whose political fortunes could be tied to its performance.
Until then, the need for more transit and the bloated bureaucracy of TransLink will continue to be linked in the public mind.
New Westminster launched its Vote Yes New West campaign on Monday and wisely had some young people step up and say why it's vital that the referendum passes.
If the Yes campaign could hide all the elected suits somewhere and just put regular folks who depend on transit up front, the whole campaign might have a better chance of succeeding.
Truck drivers, students, delivery drivers, retail workers - those who really depend on a working transit system.
As teenager Sadie DeCoste said at the launch in New Westminster Monday, "Public transit is the most feasible means of getting from one place to another. ...We are the generation that will face the impacts of climate change, the human rights issue of our time."
She's right. But can voters see beyond TransLink's incompetence to vote Yes?
