You’re footing the bill
Tuques, tickets, meals and $17,000 phone bills — regional taxpayers are picking up the costs for these and more
Niagara Region expense documents released this week show several regional councillors paid for tickets to charitable events and made donations to local charities, only to bill those donations to the taxpayer.
Expense reports published online Tuesday show that since their term of office started in 2014, regional councillors gave financial support through donations and event tickets to women’s shelters, poverty initiatives, food banks and other charity fundraisers and then made local taxpayers foot the bill.
Some examples include:
• St. Catharines Coun. Brian Heit expensed a $10 ticket for the 2016 Toque Tuesday. The event supports Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold and the ticket buys a tuque or socks.
• In 2015, Niagara Falls Coun. Selina Volapatti donated $200 to the YWCA and received a charitable tax receipt for it. She claimed, and received, the $200 on her expenses.
• Pelham Coun. Brian Baty received a charitable tax receipt for $174 for tickets purchased to a Port Cares event in 2014 and claimed the money on his expenses.
• In 2015, Fort Erie Coun. Sandy Annunziata expensed $141 he paid to attend the Still Mosca fundraising dinner for the Alzheimer’s Society in Hamilton and the CFL Alumni association.
Several other councillors claimed tickets for events that included other charity functions and the annual state of the Region address.
On Tuesday, thousands of pages of expense reports dating back to 1997 were published by Niagara Region on Niagaraopen.ca. The data include monthly expense reports for councillors going back to 2010, and annual salary and expense summaries dating back to 1997.
The publication of the reports were the result of a freedom of information request filed by Regional Chair Alan Caslin last October.
His filing followed reports by The Standard on councillor expenses in September and the paper’s Sept. 28 freedom of information request for all expense reports for this term of council.
The Region’s information office asked The Standard to put its request aside in favour of Caslin’s. The paper refused and the Region denied The Standard’s request and processed Caslin’s.
Caslin did not respond to multiple requests for an interview from The Standard to discuss his expenses, those of regional council and the Region’s expense policy.
In an emailed statement, Caslin praised the release of the reports as another step toward transparency and said voters would judge his expenses against his record as regional chair.
The Standard began to examine the reports of this term of council, which began in December 2014, on Wednesday.
The monthly expenses include mileage, meals and other costs including event tickets and other items.
The reports also include wireless bills for councillor cellphones and iPads. Those bills often show large roaming charges, sometimes in the thousands of dollars.
The largest roaming charge belongs to St. Catharines Coun. Andy Petrowski, who racked up more than $17,000 in charges for December 2016. The bill shows the charges were accrued when 710 megabytes of data moved through his phone from the Caribbean and another 670 MB in the United States.
Petrowski did not respond to a request for an interview.
Roaming charges have been a vexing issue for some councillors, who say the charges shouldn’t be on their bill. Some, including Port Colborne Coun. David Barrick and Annunziata, have had large roaming charges removed from their bill or had their accounts credited for the amount.
“The taxpayer should never be responsible for outrageous roaming charges. I’ve made that very clear,” Annunziata said in a Wednesday email to The Standard.
He said when charges appear and are in error, councillors can do what he and Barrick did, and have them removed. Councillors have to sign off on the bills annually and so should be aware when something is amiss.
“We individually sign that expense sheet, therefore confirming this is the amount we believe is an accurate reflection and description of the cost of representing our collective constituents. So any councillor who claims they were unaware of outrageous roaming charges, they’re not being truthful,” Annunziata said. “They have a chance to fix the problem, like Coun. Barrick and myself did, before ever authorizing or signing that statement.”
The reports released this week do not include all of 2017, and it is not clear if the taxpayer paid for Petrowski’s $17,000 roaming bill.
David Siegel, a Brock University political science professor specializing in municipal affairs, said Wednesday the issue of what councillors can claim as expenses can be something of a “grey area.”
He said it is not illegal for councillors to claim the cost of donations or charity event tickets on their expenses. However, he said if a councillor made a donation, and then got that money back on their expenses, they cannot use the charitable tax receipt against their income taxes.
“That would be a form of doubledipping,” he said. “Certainly, the Canada Revenue Agency would not view that as a charitable donation.”
Siegel noted that municipal politicians receive one-third of their salary tax-free. Although no legislation defines limits on what councillors can do because of that tax break, Siegel said the tacit understanding is that it is to allow politicians to attend community and charity events.
“There is an expectation that as a politician you attend these events, so this is done to allow that,” Siegel said.
“(Claiming donations on expenses) is not a policy I would personally approve of. I think the Region perhaps needs a stronger policy on this issue.”
Siegel said politicians receive public recognition for attending events and making donations. Whether politicians are making the public pay for building their reputations is also a grey area, he said.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs said in an email Wednesday that the government of Ontario views municipalities as “responsible and accountable governments, with the authority to make decisions within their jurisdiction.”
“It is up to each municipality to make decisions regarding council expenses,” Praveen Senthinathan said.
Regional policy currently permits councillors to claim event tickets and donations on their expenses.
Siegel said the nature of regional policy allows councillors to claim a wide variety of events as expenses. For instance, Annunziata has been criticized for expensing mileage to take trips to Toronto to appear on the Newstalk 1010 talk radio show. The councillor has defended the expense by saying he is promoting Niagara on the show.
The documents released this week show Annunziata — a regular guest on the radio show in 2015 and 2016 — hasn’t expensed trips to the Toronto radio station in recent months. The Standard asked Annunziata if he has stopped appearing on the show, or if he has stopped claiming mileage for the trips. He did not answer the question.
Asked by The Standard if Niagara taxpayers should pay for his donation to the Hamilton Alzheimer’s Society event and mileage to get there, Annunziata said it was “a pleasure to attend.” Mosca, like Annunziata, is a former CFL player and “many Tiger Cat alumni are residents of Niagara.”
“I’ll continue to support Niagara residents, especially during their time of need.
“Mr. Mosca and his wife Helen are residents of Niagara and have been for sometime. It was my pleasure to represent Niagara and support my childhood hero and his family during this difficult time. “
The Standard asked Annunziata a second time why Niagara taxpayers should foot the bill for his donation. The councillor did not reply.
Heit said if an organization in St. Catharines invites him to a fundraiser because he’s a councillor, he tries to attend.
In 2016, the reports show, Heit expensed tickets for Toque Tuesday in downtown St. Catharines at $10, Bethlehem Housing’s fundraiser Empty Bowls for $75, Community Care’s trivia night fundraiser at Coppola’s Banquet Hall for $25 and the agency’s fundraising show “Hilarity for Charity” at Showtime on St. Paul Street for $20. He also expensed mileage to the events.
Heit said he doesn’t always expense the tickets and it depends on whether he has a receipt.
But he said expensing tickets is a way to help out a charity.
“By me showing up and paying 75 bucks for a ticket or 25 or 50 bucks to go to an event, it’s a way I can help them out because it’s their fundraiser,” he said.
He added councillors go to all types of events and that he doesn’t expense everything, such as chamber of commerce events.
“I want to help out the local charities, and if I can help them out, that’s one way I can do it.”
While Heit charges the Region for his tickets, he said he personally pays for his wife’s ticket to go with him, the wine they may have at their table and other expenses incurred at the fundraiser.
Volpatti said in September she expensed her donation to the YWCA because “I thought that was the policy, and I thought that was a good policy that the Region had.”
Many regional councillors in the reports expense charity tickets, but not all do.
St. Catharines Coun. Kelly Edgar’s expenses consisted mostly of mileage, conference, cellphone and iPad costs.
He said he doesn’t expense charity items.
“I pay that out of pocket,” Edgar said when asked if he attends those types of events. “It’s not something that should be expensed to the Region as far as I’m concerned.”
The Standard’s coverage of regional councillor expense will continue.