Six months ago, Rob Lantz was sworn in as premier of Prince Edward Island with a mandate of his own. He promised to fix the province’s finances and be more transparent. He’s failing to live up to those promises.

Lantz issued a mandate letter to government laying out five focuses for the next 12 months after taking office. One of them is: Ensuring decisions are made with “aggressive financial stewardship and transparency.”

Half of those 12 months are gone. On both counts, Lantz is failing.

Start with the financial stewardship.

The Lantz government plans to borrow $410 million this year. That will push P.E.I.’s total government debt up by nearly 20 per cent in a single year.

This is despite multiple warnings from the province’s auditor general that a plan needs to be implemented to combat growing government debt, warning it will a burden of future generations.

And it doesn’t stop there. The government plans to pile on another $1.3 billion in debt over the next three years.

All that borrowing comes with a real cost. Debt interest costs will take $201 million from taxpayers this year. That works out to about $1,100 for every Islander.

This is more than the province collects in business income tax and about half as much as it collects from taxpayers through the sales tax.

This is money that won’t fix a hospital, pave a road or cut a tax bill. It goes straight out the door to pay the government’s lenders.

And every dollar Lantz borrows today is a dollar, plus interest, that taxpayers must pay back tomorrow.

Is that aggressive financial stewardship? It looks more like a government maxing out the credit card and mailing the bill to the next generation.

Now for the transparency half of the promise.

P.E.I. is one of only two provinces without a sunshine list. Quebec is the other. Everywhere else, taxpayers can look up the names, positions and salaries of government employees that are paid six figures. Ontario has published its list every year since 1996.

Lantz had a chance to fix that this spring. He blew it.

Instead of a real sunshine list, his government passed a law that publishes job titles and salary ranges, but no names and no exact salaries. That’s not a sunshine list. That’s a curtain with a few pinholes in it.

Green Leader Peter Bevan-Baker saw through it, calling the bill "a waste of time" that "does absolutely nothing."

He’s right. Islanders pay the bills for their government. They deserve to see where the money goes, right down to the name on every six-figure paycheque.

None of this is what Lantz promised when he took the oath in February. He didn’t promise careful language and half measures. He promised aggressive financial stewardship and transparency. Aggressive stewardship means saying no to new borrowing. Real transparency means letting taxpayers see the books, and the payroll, for themselves.

The good news for Lantz is that his own deadline isn’t up yet. He has six months left. Here’s how to use that time.

First, table a plan to stop the borrowing and start paying down the debt. Government spending must be reviewed line by line to find savings, just as the Chrétien government did in the 1990s when it cut program spending by nearly 19 per cent and paved the way for major tax relief.

This should include eliminating the $295 million the Lantz government hands out in corporate welfare, which does nothing to create jobs in the province long term, but comes at a steep cost to taxpayers.

Second, pass a real sunshine list with names and exact salaries, like eight other provinces already have.

Lantz set this test for himself. Six months in, he’s failing it. He needs to spend the next six months earning a passing grade.