Mediation by the Information Privacy Commissioner’s (IPC) office between the municipality and area resident John Cryderman has led to an impasse in the quest to find out the actual cost of Chatham-Kent trips overseas.
Since 2006, municipal staff have presented return on investment (ROI) reports to council regarding overseas trips to find economic opportunities for Chatham-Kent. At issue, according to Cryderman, is that none of the reports contain any accounting of the funds spent.
On March 19, Cryderman filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the municipality requesting “all costs and associated costs” of the trips, including the mayor and staff and their air fare, food, accommodations and all expenses related to overseas trips and visitors. He was quoted $1,320 for the cost of getting him that information. That amount was later reduced to $660 (two employees’ time of 22 hours at $30/hour to compile the information).
During mediation, Cryderman said C-K gave examples that all air travel is categorized under one expense for all air travel and would have to be individually accessed. He responded, however, pointing out the municipality’s accounting system with the use of collator codes significantly simplifies and does the account editing.
“The mechanics of C-K’s coding system, having codes assigned to each transaction, simply does not take the time you are portraying,” Cryderman said in statement to the municipality. “I submit the costs displayed and attempted to be charged are based on arbitrary, rather than sound and factual evidence. You are actually telling me, the province, council and the taxpayers that C-K doesn’t know what this overseas investment project has cost and continues costing. If you do know, that would mean you have the data already, which you should have anyway, which is only being responsible and accountable, something C-K boasts of being but thus far has not demonstrated.”
In a breakfast meeting with members of the Chatham-Kent Chamber of Commerce in May, Mayor Randy Hope stated the cost of the overseas trips since 2006 where he attended totaled $244,502.56. Hope told Cryderman his international travel costs only totaled $121,948.22 with federal funding from 2013-2017 received for the program totaling $126,009.87.
“In order for Chatham-Kent to break down the figures above to the nearest penny, same cannot be done without a true, accurate and comprehensive account of all costs anyway,” Cryderman noted. “I am requesting the province advance this matter to inquiry. Both parties, yet again, can present their arguments. The enormous amount of time, resources and expense Chatham-Kent continues to incur by not disclosing has me perplexed.”
He also doesn’t understand how council members can sit back and not want to know how much the overseas trips are costing.
“This an ROI/Foreign Investment project as previously reported to council. Council continues to not request costs. The most recent travel update motion by Coun. (Doug) Sulman, passed last week by council, if identical to the previous council requested reports will only yield an itinerary of happenings absent of costs. This project is budgeted by both the mayor’s office and Economic Development. Council should be aware each department works with “Financial Mangers Workshop” software or similar, compatible with, and integrated with the municipality’s JD Edwards/ERP/POS accounting system allowing for quick and easily accessible data retrieving, archiving, collating and dispatching.
“The amount of unnecessary municipal employee time, resource and cost to the taxpayers that Chatham-Kent goes to in order to keep information out of the hands of the public and council needs attention.”
In a letter to municipal councillors dated June 3 regarding the overseas costs, Cryderman takes issue with the lack of oversight by council of how taxpayer money is being spent.
“Do you not think your legislated role is to monitor municipal costs of our daily operations and to at least know, in this case, what our fully taxpayer funded overseas investment project is costing residents? Taxpayers don’t care about itineraries in the subject reports (Nov. 28, 2012 as an example), they want to know what it’s costing. Taxpayers need to know in order to scrutinize and have a say to how their dollars are spent.”
He added the issue isn’t the merit of chasing overseas investment, “it’s the hiding of information, and in this case, making information unaffordable for many residents to access which violates the intent of the FOI legislation.”
If indeed accounting is done properly within City Hall the information should be able to be produced with a few mouse clicks and should be made available to taxpayers free of charge upon request since we the taxpayers pay the wages of municipal employees. I can certainly understand Mr. Cryderman’s frustration. Each trip “should” be in a file and easily retrievable…..unless of course someone for some reason wishes this information does not become public knowledge. The mayor and staff “owe” the electorate a public accounting/breakdown of how our monies are spent on these overseas ventures that have produced little or nothing.
Proper accounting allows for accountability. This is not complicated and we as tax payers and council deserve accurate, timely and detailed reports on how money is spent in Chatham-Kent.