James: Attacking city’s auditor to get at Ford is wrong
By Royson James
Toronto Star
City Columnist
In most homes around town, Jeff Griffiths’ name is gold.
The city’s auditor general spends his days sniffing through balance sheets, checking tips to the city’s fraud and waste hotline, on the hunt to save taxpayers’ money.
And periodically he files his findings, as he did last week on the scandalous spending at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.
You’d think Griffiths would be hailed as a hero at city hall. You’d be wrong, especially if you looked to the city councillors intent on stopping Mayor Rob Ford.
Their priority, played out at council Tuesday, is to discount any findings of waste that the mayor may use to bolster his campaign to cut the size of government.
So, instead of lionizing Griffiths at city council, the group of councillors sought to belittle him, cut him down to size, and weaken his bite.
The attack, strictly for political gain, was unconscionable and shameful. Worse, only a few councillors rose to defend Griffiths.
“This is a classic case of shoot the messenger,†said Councillor Doug Holyday. Right he was.
Griffiths the messenger properly filed an audit report showing housing staff spent thousands of dollars on pedicures, manicures, gift chocolate, spas, planning trips to Muskoka, sole-source contracts, and other procurement that clearly violated city policy. Meanwhile, public housing tenants couldn’t get their units fixed, for shortage of money.
Star columnist Joe Fiorito obtained details of some of the auditor’s findings a couple days before the official news conference releasing them to the public. His information was correct.
Days later Star reporter Robyn Doolittle obtained details of a draft report the auditor is to file in a month or so on the police department. We’ll soon find out that the information is spot-on.
In releasing the housing audit, Griffiths said that in his time as auditor general he had never seen as disturbing a case of inappropriate spending. “Frankly, it angered and outraged me.â€
From the mild-mannered Griffiths, this was strong stuff. And considering that the misspent money should have gone to help poor families, his words were a balm to their wounds.
Ford, of course, jumped on the findings. He had no role in the audit — the auditor general independently sets his work plan — but he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to drive home his mantra of stopping the gravy train at city hall.
Blinded by their zeal to stop Ford, too many left-wing councillors chose to attack Griffiths rather than accept his findings and demand greater accountability. They support public housing, not any suggestion of privatization. They support big government, not Ford’s push to cut the size of government. They support more spending at city hall for city-building, not a contraction of the budget.
They lost the last election.
Ford won, promising the opposite of what these councillors practised for seven years under David Miller.
These councillors have a duty to provide effective opposition to Ford. And they do. They also have a duty to protect taxpayers, ahead of members of the TCHC board, ahead of city staff who may have failed to provide proper oversight in the spending of tax dollars.
But instead of focusing on the indiscretions of public service workers, the councillors seemed intent on protecting them, even in the face of the auditor’s findings. And instead of condemning staff behaviour, they wanted to focus on media leaks in the public interest.
The dissenting councillors intimated that Griffiths and/or staff may have leaked portions of two auditors’ reports to the media. They all but said Griffiths had come under the “undue influence†of the mayor. They cast aspersions on his integrity, even as they professed not to.
Then Councillor Adam Vaughan, unable to hide his contempt for the auditor general, gave him a lecture on integrity and public accountability and warned of an “audit process that is going off the rails.â€
Staring at Griffiths, an independent auditor with more integrity than a dozen councillors put together, Vaughan instructed him to “tighten the regulations and rules†in his department. Then he upbraided Griffiths, ending with:
“And if there’s a leak in his department, it’s on his watch,†Vaughan spat, jabbing his finger at Griffiths, a few seats away.
Deputy mayor and audit committee chair Doug Holyday jumped to Griffiths’ defence.
“This is a classic case of ‘shoot the messenger.’ You don’t like the message so you shoot the messenger.â€
Afterwards, unbowed, Griffiths said “one or wo councillors have a problem with what I do.â€
Try six or seven or eight who would throw him under the bus.
