Edmonton City Council changing expense disclosure policy

EDMONTON – The new city council is taking steps to be more transparent when it comes to how tax dollars are spent, but critics say they’re not going far enough.

Each council office is allocated an annual budget of about $108,000 for things like hiring staff and covering other expenses. On Tuesday, Edmonton City Council debated ways to share how the budget is spent, and how often expenses should be posted.

“This is a big issue for me; making sure we’re being open and transparent,” said Ward 1 Councillor Andrew Knack.

Council expenses are posted on an annual basis with only generic categories on where the money is spent. New changes to that process mean postings will be more specific and itemized reports.

“The new updated and more detailed statements give a very good breakdown,” said Knack.

“What we’re going to see now going forward is that if we’re going to host someone from a community league, we’ll actually write down the name of the person and the name of the organization they’re representing, versus just one general hosting program where we lump them all together,” he explained.

Knack also pushed Council to post expenses on a quarterly basis, instead of yearly.

“We know that the province of Alberta and the City of Calgary each do it quarterly. We should make sure we’re holding ourselves to the same standard.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation claims Edmonton City Council is falling below the ‘gold standard’ set by the provincial government’s new expense disclosure policy.

“Edmonton by contrast is one of the worst in the country,” said Derek Fildebrandt. “It’s just as bad as our senators; it’s just as bad as our MPs. No disclosure.”

Fildebrandt would like to see councillors post actual receipts.

“If we don’t have the receipts, really any kind of expense disclosure that’s made is going to be largely symbolic and meaningless.”

“People were angered when Bev Oda bought a $16 glass of orange juice,” he added. “We wouldn’t have known that without a receipt.”

Knack said council was told that posting actual receipts would be more expensive for Council and tax payers.

Councillors believe the detailed statements will provide a lot of information to the public.

“I’m very comfortable with it,” said Knack.

“We have to do as much as we can, I think, as councillors, to reduce the level of cynicism out there,” added Ward 6 Councillor Scott McKeen.  “I’m certainly not going to do it to satisfy the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, but I’ll do it to satisfy the citizens of Edmonton.”

McKeen said he’ll be posting some of his receipts on his website, and expects a few other councillors to do the same.

For more information on councillors’ expense reports, click here.

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With files from Vinesh Pratap, Global News