Mayor Gregor Robertson’s two former aides were paid a combined $61,000 on consulting contracts, but they delivered no reports or other documents about their activities.
In April, Business in Vancouver revealed that Robertson and his staff spent a record $264,137 in 2015 on non-essential goods and services — including $174,321 on political consultants — under the so-called mayor’s discretionary budget.
The spending report, obtained under Freedom of Information, said Lara Honrado’s company, Georgetown Consulting, was paid $31,000 and Rita Ko $30,000. They both quit last spring, but were retained by chief of staff Mike Magee through the summer. Their contracts were released to BIV, but city hall’s FOI manager said that they produced no reports, project plans, schedules or budget documents.
“There are no additional records other than what was previously provided,” Barbara Van Fraassen wrote on May 19. “The work by both consultants focused primarily on knowledge transfer, event assistance and briefings as new staff replacements were hired.”
Honrado’s first contract, for a maximum $20,000, ran from April 13 to June 30 and involved Filipino community outreach, sister cities initiatives, assisting Magee on “overall strategic objectives,” and attending meetings on behalf of the mayor. She signed another for up to $16,000 for July and August and $3,000 for September. The maximum under the three contracts was $39,000, but the report said Honrado was paid $31,0000.
Ko was contracted April 27, 2015 to assist Robertson in correspondence and meeting scheduling, email introductions to external stakeholders and partners when necessary and sharing of knowledge and experience.
She had two $18,000 maximum contracts between May 9 and July 3 and July 4 and Sept. 30, but the report said she was paid $30,000.
For 2013, the most recent full year available, Ko was paid $66,957.40 as director of operations for Robertson, while Honrado was paid $66,141.98 to be director of community relations.
Magee was Robertson’s chief of staff until early May when he began a four-month assignment to lobby for federal transit and housing funds. Magee declined comment on Honrado and Ko’s contracts before he went on holiday May 31. In an email, Sarah Zaharia, Robertson’s April-hired communications strategist, said Honrado and Ko “fully delivered the services as required and outlined in their contracts.”
Ko, Zaharia said, did weekly calls over a four-month period to support Robertson’s new executive assistant, Nicole Seguin, and accompanied Robertson on his May 2015 trip to Paris. Honrado helped plan last fall’s Robertson-led sister city trip to Guangzhou, China, and his hosting of delegations from Guangzhou and Yokohama. She also attended Filipino, Indian and Latino cultural events.
Meanwhile, Catherine Chan was paid $12,000 for Chinese media monitoring. City hall released Chan’s 401 pages of links and summaries to broadcast and print coverage of civic events and issues by local Chinese language outlets. City hall also gave BIV a copy of the four Robertson speeches by Social Signal that cost taxpayers $9,100. By BIV’s count, the speeches totalled 9,931 words, a rate of almost 92 cents per word.
After BIV’s story in April, NPA Coun. George Affleck persuaded the Vision Vancouver city council majority to proactively release the mayor’s discretionary spending on a regular basis. However, in a May 11 FOI response letter, Van Fraassen refused to fulfil a May 2 request for the first four months of Robertson’s 2016 spending. She said city hall would release the report within 60 business days, meaning sometime before July 27.
