Senior Brampton City Hall staff approved secret $1.25M bonus slush fund: report
City's audit committee to tackle $1.25M in staff bonuses that could not be tracked

bramptonguardian.com
June 5, 2017
By Peter Criscione

An unprecedented abuse of taxpayer dollars by the City of Brampton's former top executives, who approved secretive non-union bonuses worth $1.25 million - including payments for “favouritism” that could have gone to themselves - has been revealed in an internal audit report.

It’s unclear if council, which meets Tuesday to receive the audit committee report, will call for a criminal investigation into the matter. Mayor Linda Jeffrey was asked if she would call for a police probe into staffers who quietly used public revenues from taxpayers like their personal bank account between 2009 and 2014.

"This is at best serious negligence, and at worst corruption," Jeffrey wrote in an email response Monday. "I will continue to explore any and all avenues available to us. Respecting the taxpayers and residents of Brampton is my highest priority."

The audit report focuses on a practice that became common among the city's non-union staff called Outside Policy Requests (OPR). Senior staff devised the system of secret bonus payments to other non-union employees, and possibly to themselves.

According to the audit report, city officials described OPRs as "discretionary salary increases determined by the operating department heads" that were "outside of council-approved policies" and documented procedures.

In the neighbouring cities of Toronto and Vaughan spokespeople told The Guardian they do not have any such practices, nor had officials in those cities heard of such practices.

The objective of OPR, according to previously undisclosed documents unearthed in the audit report, was to “align the salaries within the respective grades to achieve fairness and equity".

However, Brampton auditors state that such bonuses were not part of council-approved policy or authorized under relevant rules and that over time “requests were approved for reasons beyond its initial intention.”

The audit also points out that the OPR payments to non-union staff could not be tracked because there was a "lack of coding".

With no oversight or formalized processes “the OPR practice became mismanaged.”