Friends of Susan Fennell plan fundraiser to retire $129,000 campaign debt

Thestar.com
March 19, 2015
By San Grewal

Former Brampton mayor Susan Fennell racked up a $129,156 deficit during her failed re-election campaign last year. Now members of the community will be asked to help cover the shortfall.

Asked to confirm reports that a fundraiser is planned, former campaign chair Ron Webb, said: “That is correct. She still has me and some other loyal supporters that are going to try to help.”

Webb, a prominent local lawyer, said the event is still in early planning stages. “Within the next week or two we will firm up any plans.”

Fennell could not be reached for comment.

According to her election finance statement filed with the city last week, Fennell spent $261,199 on her 2014 campaign, but raised only $132,043 - less than half of what she raised in 2010.

Four years earlier, she garnered $267,155 in donations and spent $260,480, resulting in a surplus.

Fennell, who had served as mayor since 2000, received city remuneration of $482,561 for 2014, including $297,232 in retiring allowance. (Those figures do not include her remuneration for serving on Peel Region council.) She is also seeking $450,000 in damages from the city in an application to Ontario’s Divisional Court, claiming she was unfairly penalized after a forensic audit found she and her staff had broken spending rules 266 times.

In addition to the spending scandal, she faced stiff criticism during her last term in office over a lack of financial disclosure for her private mayor's gala, a non-charity for which the city spent $175,000 of taxpayer money without council's knowledge.

Fennell lost the October 2014 election to Linda Jeffrey, taking only 12.5 per cent of the vote, compared with Jeffrey’s 49 per cent.

“This is laughable,” Councillor Elaine Moore said of the fundraiser plans.

“The community already gave her gala $175,000 without ever knowing it. The gala never did produce financial statements for certain years. And all the money she spent on expenses and travel,” said Moore, long one of Fennell’s sharpest critics.

“She's allowed to cover her campaign deficit by asking the community to pay, and people are free to do what they want. I just don't understand why she spent so much money that she didn't have, knowing that the support wasn't there. That was obvious when traditional funders of hers refused to donate,” Moore said.

“Unfortunately, this disconnect from the taxpayers was also evident in her leadership at city hall.”

Moore said residents have complained to her that any fundraising efforts to cover Fennell's campaign shortfall would take place while she is pursuing legal action against the city.

Council stripped Fennell of 90 days’ pay and withheld $144,150 from her for limousine services that Fennell could not prove were for city business. Fennell is seeking damages as well as a reversal of the council penalties. No hearing date has been set.

“Who does she think would be paying the $450,000?” Moore questioned. “I'll tell you who: The same people she now wants to pony up for the $129,000 she owes for her campaign.”

Fennell has filed for an extension period to raise the funds, not including more than $9,000 of the $129,156 deficit that she cannot raise because it does not count toward her total fundraising limit for her 2014 election campaign.