‘NO CLEAR ROADMAP’ FOR CITY
Council struggles with expenses probe
Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it’s time to address “gaps” in the way city council reports expenses amid criticism of Coun. Joe Magliocca’s spending at a municipal conference last year.
The full picture of Magliocca’s expenses from the 2019 Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference — where he billed up to three times as much as his colleagues — was only disclosed through a freedom of information request by Postmedia, because unlike the councillors’ ward office budgets, council travel and hosting costs expensed to the city’s corporate accounts are not publicly reported.
“We actually found a gap in our system that I was not aware existed. And we should close that gap,” Nenshi said Wednesday.
Council spent several hours behind closed doors at a special meeting the mayor called to “expedite” a conversation about what to do after the city’s integrity commissioner recused himself from looking into a complaint about Magliocca’s expenses.
The discussion was kept confidential and council hasn’t yet decided who will look into the complaint, given that there’s “no clear roadmap” about what to do, Nenshi said.
Next week, they will discuss a proposal from Coun. Jyoti Gondek asking that a specialist, overseen by the city auditor, investigate all the Ward 2 expenses from 2019. Councillors Jeromy Farkas and Sean Chu are also planning to ask that the investigation be expanded to include all council members’ expenses since the 2017 election.
Two weeks ago, the mayor said there isn’t much more oversight needed as long as councillors adhere to the city’s existing rules around transparency and disclosure. City council members are already required to report expenses where taxpayers foot the bill, and most of them are publicly available.
But on Wednesday, while Nenshi added the issues council is discussing are an example of the system of disclosure working the way it’s supposed to, he said he’s willing to have a conversation about possible changes. That could include publicly disclosing itemized receipts from council members’ expenses.
“This incident has highlighted, perhaps, some things we can do better,” Nenshi said.
“I’m happy for people to go through my expenses. They will see that there’s way too much A&W on there. But, ultimately, I think that kind of transparency is important.”
Council also voted to designate Nenshi as council’s spokesman for questions still swirling around expenses to provide “clarity.”
He said council should now be able to move forward with some decisions.
“One of the challenging things about this whole conversation is people are saying ‘We’ve got to do an investigation. We’ve got to ask more questions.’ I feel like the investigation’s kind of been done,” he said.
“The question then becomes: where do we go from here? What now? And I’d like to focus my mind on that.”
Coun. Diane Colley-urquhart also sent a message to Calgarians as the meeting wrapped up.
“We want the public to know that we take this matter extremely seriously. We’ve been wrestling with it for two or three weeks now,” she said.
“If matters of this nature were easy to deal with, it would have already happened.”
Magliocca absent
Magliocca wasn’t at the Wednesday meeting, and while several councillors were calling in, the Ward 2 councillor wasn’t among them. Nenshi said he doesn’t know where Magliocca is.
The councillor hasn’t responded to Postmedia’s requests for comment since last week. He publicly apologized for “errors” in his FCM expenses at the beginning of February, but he hasn’t addressed recent criticism of his expenses. That includes expensing a $163 meal with integrity commissioner Sal Lovecchio that the commissioner called a “social lunch” that shouldn’t have been billed to taxpayers.
Since Magliocca’s public statement, which included a pledge to pay back about $2,100 in hosting costs from FCM last year, Postmedia has found 10 cases of elected officials and business representatives listed on the councillor’s receipts who say they didn’t sit down with him.
Some councillors have said that Magliocca needs to publicly address his expenses again. Nenshi said he isn’t willing to tell another member of council what to do.
“Ultimately, he — and I don’t want to speak for him — I believe he feels that he has told his story,” he said.
“Certainly, this has been a difficult conversation for all involved, and I think it’s important to make sure that he feels that he’s been heard and that the process going forward is fair to him. But at the same time we need to make sure the process going forward is fair to everyone.”
Council’s closed-door meeting on Wednesday included advice from
I feel like the investigation’s kind of been done. The question then becomes: where do we go from here?
the city solicitor, city manager and ethics adviser. Nenshi warned the meeting would include “tough conversations” as council also spoke with Lovecchio, who has faced criticism from some councillors for what he described as a social meal with Magliocca.
Some have called for Lovecchio to step away from his watchdog role, but Nenshi said it was the right move for Lovecchio to recuse himself and the fact that there wasn’t any action taken against him Wednesday “speaks volumes.”