The former chief administrative officer with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District has resigned from a position with a local university following a media report of his spending while with the district.
Sukh Gill, who had had an annual salary of more than $200,000 during his time as CAO, also charged more than $500,000 to his work credit card over a five-year period, according to a recent report in Kamloops This Week.
“We ended up filing about three dozen FOI requests as a result of tips that were coming in to us as a result of questions we had about the regional district’s former CAO’s departure,” Kamloops This Week reporter Jessica Wallace said.
A database of Gill’s TNRD expenses from 2015 to 2020 can be found here.
The report found $174,000 in expenses associated with restaurants and coffee shops. Taxpayers paid about $8,000 for a champagne room at a Whistler hotel.
Taxpayers also paid more than $1,000 for a diamond-and-gold necklace Gill bought for a retiring colleague.
The TNRD was not available for an interview Wednesday, telling Global News technically Gill did not violate any rules or laws, but that the policy around expenses has been changed.
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Thompson Rivers University confirmed to CFJC that Gill is no longer on its board of governors.
Kris Sims, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, is calling on Premier John Horgan to prioritize making a strong office of the municipal auditor general for B.C.
“We need to send a message that a bureaucrat spending nearly $8,000 of taxpayers’ money on a champagne room is unacceptable,” she said.
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