Public frozen out of election audit debate
October 31, 2005

Citizens can neither speak to council about the recently submitted compliance audit of Mayor Di Ianni, nor will they even get to watch their councillors debate the report on television.

By receiving the auditor's report at one council meeting and asking for a report at the next one, councillors have bypassed the normal committee process where citizens are allowed to make comments. Citizens can ask to speak to committees, but not to the formal meetings of council.

Decisions made at council are normally first debated in a committee setting, but that isn't scheduled to occur for the compliance audit report on the mayor's campaign finances. And since the council discussion on the audit report is expected to occur on November 9 when council will meet in the former Glanbrook town hall, there won't be any cable television coverage of the debate about the audit.

The Glanbrook location is part of an 'outreach' program whereby council has scheduled a meeting in each of the former suburban municipalities that were amalgamated with the city in 2000. When the travelling council meetings were announced, cable television officials made it clear that they would not be able to broadcast from the suburban locations.

A judge ordered council last May to conduct a compliance audit of the campaign finances of the mayor and two defeated candidates in the 2003 municipal elections. Since then all discussion of the audit has been confined to council meetings with no opportunity for citizen input.

On May 25 council received a "memorandum" from the city solicitor recommending that the hiring of the auditor be handled by the city treasurer, Joe Rinaldo. At the July 13 meeting, Rinaldo provided an update to the council in the form of a "letter", and subsequently he made his recommendation at the August 10 council meeting in the form of a "motion".

Last week, the auditor's submission was a late addition to the agenda, and was submitted under correspondence with a recommendation "that it be received and referred to the city solicitor and the city clerk for a report back to the next city council meeting". That didn't sit well with Dave Braden who said referring it to staff was "problematic" and who described the auditor's report as "not complete".

"I don't think this is a communication at all," he said. "I think this is a contracted report. It needs some debate and deliberation by ourselves or a committee". Braden noted that "the presiding judge has in fact rapped our knuckles very clearly for not taking action in the past" and he offered a motion to ask the auditor to complete the report.

But that got lost in the subsequent discussion which began with Bill Kelly who strongly supported referring the report to staff. "The process that we've followed all the way along is to be getting legal advice on this matter," argued Kelly. "I don't want to do any knee-jerk reactions to this thing." This direction was also supported by Sam Merulla.

Art Samson echoed Braden's concerns that the auditor's report wasn't complete. "The audit was to comply with the wishes of the judge, and to do all the things which the judge was asking for, and I just want to know whether or not the audit has done that."

At this point, Ancaster councillor Murray Ferguson moved to end the debate. The acting chair, Tom Jackson, noted that others had asked to speak including Brian McHattie, Bob Bratina and Terry Whitehead, but the majority supported Ferguson's closure motion and the recommendation to refer the auditor's report to the solicitor and clerk. Braden and Bratina asked to be recorded as opposed.