Vancouver city councillors spent just under $116,000 on local expenses, transportation and conference attendance last year, according to a staff report.
Mayor Gregor Robertson’s spending topped the list. Councillors Heather Deal and Raymond Louie were in second and third place, respectively.
Of councillors that served the full 2011 term, Coun. Kerry Jang cost taxpayers the least across the three discretionary categories, spending less than a third of what each of the three top spenders did.
“I’m a good-value guy,” Jang joked, explaining that he tries to get conference organizers to pay his way where possible.
But Jang said a chief reason for his more modest tab was having a locally focused portfolio – housing and homelessness.
“Other [councillors] have infrastructure things, so they have to go to various conferences and stuff.”
He added that through his job as a psychiatry professor at the University of British Columbia, he’s been able attend medical and psychiatric conferences that double as council research.
Louie, who spent the second most on conference attendance after Deal, argued that his efforts have generated concrete results.
“Through my position as a [Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM)] director and chair of the FCM Municipal Infrastructure and Transportation Committee, I was able to meet and speak directly with federal [Transportation] Minister John Baird several times to remove barriers to the City of Vancouver accessing federal infrastructure stimulus funding,” he said in an email.
Louie added that the city has since received approximately $50 million in stimulus funding.
But Dermod Travis, executive director of Victoria-based political watchdog IntegrityBC, pointed out that Toronto’s mayor and 44 councillors racked up a smaller conference tab last year than Vancouver’s mayor and 10 councillors
He also called for more transparency and detail in the City of Vancouver’s publicly posted expense documents.
“I think taxpayers have a right to know – are you staying at the Hotel Vancouver or are you staying at the Holiday Inn?,” he said. “That’s legitimate in a time of austerity.”
He added that it’s disconcerting to see a wide variation on how councillors are charging the city for conference attendance.
“With the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Halifax – one councillor somehow managed to go to that conference for $2,596.50, while it cost another councillor $3,382.91,” he said. “All of this can be regulated; all of it can be brought to some uniform level; it’s not going to save taxpayers a great deal of money, but it’s going to set an example.”
Travis further questioned the validity of some expenditures. For example, he pointed to former councillor Ellen Woodsworth last year charging taxpayers $82.99 for a book entitled Gender and Climate Change.
Asked what checks and balances control council’s discretionary expenditures, Robertson said, in an email: “Council’s travel expenses go through council, and we are also the only city in B.C. to post council’s expenses online for the public to see.” •
Conference calls: A reckoning of where Deal and Louie rolled up expenses in 2011
Coun. Heather Deal
Conferences: Cost:
FCM 1 Sustainable Communities Conference $1,798.83
FCM Board meeting $2,289.40
Progressive Governance Forum 2011 $500.08
(partially recovered) ($120.00)
LMLGA2 Conference $803.93
FCM Conference $2,804.53
FCM Board meeting $1,128.94
UBCM3 Convention $686.81
FCM Board meeting $1,651.53
Total $11,544.05
Coun. Raymond Louie
Conferences: Cost:
FCM Sustainable Communities Conference $920.87
FCM Board meeting $2,059.69
LMLGA Conference $253.23
(fully recovered) ($253.23)
FCM Conference $3,343.00
FCM Board meeting $610.95
UBCM Convention $686.81
FCM Board meeting $3,171.87
Total $10,793.19
2011 expenses for re-elected Vancouver councillors
Local Expenses
