Brampton council votes for police probe into secret $1.25M staff fund

Details of bonus fund outlined in report delivered to audit committee earlier this month.

Thestar.com
June 21, 2017
By Peter Criscione

Brampton council has voted to request a police investigation into a secretive bonus program that paid out $1.25 million to non-union employees going back to 2009.

“I don’t believe this is going to end unless there is a police investigation,” said Regional Councillor Gael Miles, who threw her support behind a motion asking for a police probe into the secret salary increases granted to senior city employees between Jan. 1, 2009 and May 14, 2014 - a period during which she served as budget chair for much of the time.

Called Outside Policy Requests (OPR), the secretive, unapproved, bonus scheme - detailed in a report delivered to the audit committee earlier this month - was devised by senior staff who allegedly kept elected officials in the dark for years while they paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to non-union employees.

Following a marathon discussion Wednesday on what to do next, including a debate of a proposed amendment to allow staff to conduct its own internal investigation into possible wrongdoing, councillors shot down all proposals other than a police investigation. They voted unanimously to ask Peel Regional Police to undertake an investigation to uncover everything behind the bonus scheme, including who approved it and who received payments.

The initial complaint will have to go to Peel police, as it has jurisdiction, but the force can then pass it on to an outside police service.

Councillor John Sprovieri, the first to demand a full police investigation after the scheme was revealed in the audit report, has said he will recommend either the Ontario Provincial Police or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police handle the probe to avoid potential conflicts or the appearance of conflicts.

“We have to make an assertive effort and restore the confidence of the public,” said Regional Councillor Martin Medeiros, who tabled the original motion last week requesting an “external investigation” into whether “this program contravened the Municipal Act” or if there was “illegal activity.”

Medeiros urged councillors to unanimously support the motion in order to move on from the scandals and troubles that have rocked local government in recent years.
“This motion is about pushing Brampton forward.”

Sprovieri, still rattled over senior staff’s handling of a half-billion dollar downtown development deal that’s locked the city in a legal battle, called his amendment specifying police involvement “the responsible thing for council to do.”

Several of his council colleagues agreed.

“I don’t think we can let this go,” said Councillor Jeff Bowman, who sat in as acting mayor in place of Linda Jeffrey who is in California promoting Brampton as a health sciences hub.

Following the vote, Jeffrey, who has moved a number of efforts to increase transparency, including pushing for a permanent auditor general, told the Guardian that “respecting taxpayer dollars is her “highest priority.”

“I campaigned on bringing transparency and accountability to city hall as mayor, and I am pleased to see we are continuing to move in this direction.” Jeffrey added, “I am hopeful that council will continue down this path of transparency and accountability and support my motion to appoint an independent auditor general at city hall to ensure our residents have confidence in our city’s finances moving forward.”

Payments to individual staff ranged from as little as $123 to more than $95,000, the audit report said. A total of $316,000 was paid to just eight employees. Account coding that allows internal controls to monitor payment transactions did not exist under the scheme, making the bonus transfers to staff difficult to track.

Included in the audit report was the revelation that some of the city’s most senior bureaucrats knew about the practice, and approved the payments without getting permission from council to spend public funds.

The city has not released any names of staff who were involved.

Brampton’s auditors said the bonuses were not authorized under relevant rules and that over time OPR “requests were approved for reasons beyond its initial intention.” They added that with no oversight or formalized processes “the OPR practice became mismanaged.”

The report notes that “favouritism” was listed as one of the Top 10 reasons to allow an OPR bonus in documents never shared with council.

The report acknowledges a sudden drop to almost no OPRs after 2014, the year of the last municipal election. The city stated there was no OPR line item in the annual budget.

The news led to a flood of calls and emails to the Guardian and social media posts by Brampton taxpayers demanding a police probe.

But not all councillors agreed with opening city hall up to a police investigation.

“I have a really difficult time with a motion like this that shows a lack of trust of staff,” said Regional Councillor Michael Palleschi, who argued in favour of “an additional audit” by internal staff.

Palleschi said after years of turmoil at city hall, Brampton “needs to continue looking forward and stop looking in the rearview mirror.”

“It’s really unfortunate that it happened, but I think we need to do something internally and show the public we can handle our own departments.”