Winnipeg doubles size of upper echelon of public service

In an e-mail to all Winnipeg department heads and members of city council, CAO Doug McNeil said he eliminated four vacant city positions to hire three new officers in order to improve customer service, the management of major projects and technological innovation.

"Over the past year and a half, I have been looking for opportunities to find more efficiencies and to open up reporting structures in the public service. As a result, I am realigning reporting structures for senior management," McNeil said in the widely distributed e-mail.

The three new positions are chief transportation and utilities officer, chief innovation officer and chief asset and project management officer.

Former city economist Georges Chartier has been promoted to the latter position, while the two other jobs have been posted, McNeil said.

The transportation and utilities officer will help oversee the city's massive wastewater-treatment upgrades, sewer replacements, which will cost the city more than $1 billion in the coming years, he said.

The innovation officer will be responsible for ensuring technology makes city services more efficient, while Chartier will beef up oversight of major projects, McNeil said.

"We're not consistent across all city departments in how we look at asset management and how we deliver project management," McNeil said in a telephone interview.

The other three officers are existing chief financial officer Mike Ruta, existing customer service and communications director Felicia Wiltshire and chief corporate services officer Michael Jack, whose job title has been changed from chief operating officer.

The CAO has the authority to make these changes without council approval as they do not involve any changes to the four statutory officers who report to council: the CAO, city clerk, city auditor and chief financial officer.

Transcona Coun. Russ Wyatt panned the changes, claiming the public service already has too much control over information and claimed the changes will put elected officials at a disadvantage.

"You have unelected officials increasing the size of their offices and with that comes the ability to control information and direct it," Wyatt said in an interview. "Information is, in government, power."

He said the move effectively creates a "new board of commissioners," which is a reference to the group of senior public servants whose jobs were eliminated in the 1990s by former mayor Susan Thompson.

McNeil said the new officers bear no resemblance to the board of commissioners, who ran the city on behalf of a part-time mayor.