AUDITOR GENERAL TALK
To have or not to have a municipal auditor general?
That was a question that got many civic politicians grumbling this week as they gathered at the Pan Pacific Hotel and Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Convention Centre for the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities gathering.
Some want it, some think it's a bad idea.
Ida Chong, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, is leading the provincial government's charge to set up-and fully fund-an Office of the Municipal Auditor General for British Columbia.
"While the details are still being developed, we know that the municipal auditor general will conduct a limited number of value-for-money performance audits every year," Chong wrote in a statement prior to this week's convention. "The purpose of performance audits is to help local governments in their stewardship of community assets, to identify best practices and to provide another measure of transparency and accountability for taxpayers."
Translation: An auditor general will not be spending every waking hour looking for corruption and misguided financial practices at city halls.
Instead, that person will look into such areas as whether a municipality can optimize its fire services by delivering the services itself or through a contract with a larger adjoining municipality.
That was one example provided by Chong. An auditor general will also not take the place of independent auditors, such as KPMG which looks into Vancouver's books, or question the merits of local government program policies or objectives.
So is an auditor general really necessary?
I happened to pick up a newsletter left on a couch at the Pan Pacific authored by Bill Buholzer of the legal firm Young Anderson who concluded an auditor general's role is "largely redundant." Buholzer pointed out that many private audit firms are familiar with municipal finances, that municipalities are not allowed to run deficits and that councils have power to appoint independent committees to investigate municipal spending.
"Such committees could even be used to make recommendations to the council on the most cost effective way to carry out a proposed program or project before any expenditures are made," he wrote.
If the establishment of an auditor general were part of a broader provincial approach to local government finance-putting it on a footing more similar to that of the other levels of government-then the position would make more sense, Buholzer continued. "As matters stand, however, establishing a largely redundant office to examine expenditures that are already under the discipline of pay-as-you-go financing may be a purely symbolic gesture," he added.
INSITE RULING TODAY
The Supreme Court of Canada is expected to announce Friday its ruling on the future of the Insite supervised drug injection site, which has been the subject of a legal battle with the feds.
Insite, the only legal injection site in North America, opened in September 2003 as a three-year scientific trial. It has remained opened indefinitely because of a provincial court ruling that exempted Insite from the country's drug laws.
Whichever way the Supreme Court ruling goes, you can be sure the topic of injection sites will again make its way into the civic election campaign. As I recall, Gregor Robertson said during his 2008 campaign for mayor that he wanted to see more than one injection site in the city. I'm not sure what his NPA rival, Suzanne Anton, thinks about this.
Answers to come after the ruling. [email protected]
Twitter: @Howellings
