Cao’s financial records for 2018 and 2019 have been withheld; his expense receipts for 2012-2017 show an abundance of travel
PLEASE NOTE: This article has been updated with two statements from Mayor Bill Beamish, one about the FOI itself, and one about the context of the CAO’s expenses.
(By News Desk)
In May 2019, former Gibsons Mayor Barry Janyk went through the town’s statements of Financial Information (SOFI) and noticed the expenses of Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Emanuel Machado exceeded those of anyone else on council or the town’s payroll.
Between 2013 and May 2019, Machado had spent $47,199 of taxpayers’ money on expenses, and Janyk asked the town for the receipts.
By law, every year local governments have to publish the renumeration and expenses of council members and employees with a salary of more than $75,000. The information, available online, only gives the total amounts for the year, but the public has the right to see the expense receipts.
When the town refused to provide Janyk with Machado’s receipts, employee-expense claims or credit-card statements, he made a formal Freedom of Information request on June 11, 2019.
He asked the town for “all complete and detailed monthly expense claims submitted to the town of Gibsons for Chief Administrative Officer Emanuel Machado from the month of his hire in 2012 to May 2019, including signatures of approving officers.”
By law, the town had 30 business days — six weeks — to respond. That deadline could be extended, but the town would have to give notice before the 30-day deadline expired.
Janyk heard nothing until August 28, 2019 — eleven weeks after his request — when he received 27 pages with expense claims and some receipts for a total of $4,514 — not even 10 per cent of the total.
When the town refused to provide Janyk with more information, he made a complaint to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) which oversees and enforces the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The OIPC ordered the town to provide Janyk with the information he had requested.
On June 12, 2020, a year after the initial request, Janyk received a package of 225 pages of receipts, but the records were again incomplete. There were no receipts or records for 2018 or 2019.
The records he did receive for 2012-2017 were a jumbled mess. (Please note this file is 35 MB) Receipts were missing, some had invisible dates or amounts. Several expense overviews lacked dates, or even years. (See below for some examples.)
The first batch of documents included 14 expense claims,13 of which carried illegible signatures for approval. The second batch contained no signatures authorizing the expenses.
Why was the FOI response incomplete?
“I do not comment on FOI requests as they are handled by the Corporate Officer who is appointed for that purpose, Mayor Bill Beamish said in an email to The Coast Clarion. “Council does not receive requests or review responses. If you have an issue with the town’s handling of a FOI request, you should direct your complaint to the Commissioner in Victoria.”
What emerges from the 252 pages is the image of a CAO going to a lot of conferences and doing a lot of travelling for a municipality of about 5,000 people.
According to the receipts, between 2013 and 2017 Machado went to conferences or conventions of the Local Government Management Association of BC, the Local Government Leadership Academy, the Union of B.C. Municipalities, and the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities. According to sources, these are normal expenses for a CAO.
He also went to CAO conferences and CAO forums, staying at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Victoria and the Marriott Hotel, for a total of $5,966.02 in conference fees, hotels, taxis and ferries.
The sources said these expenses may be justified for a CAO as well.
Machado’s hotel bills included room upgrades of $60 per night, and several valet-parking charges.
In the first batch of documents, an expense claim form shows he did not charge the town for room upgrades. In the second batch, these forms are missing, so it is unknown who paid for valet parking.
The receipts in the second batch show Machado also attended a number of other conferences and meetings, like those of the Canadian Network of Asset Managers and the Canadian Water Resources Association.
Five years in a row, he attended conferences of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. For two of them, he travelled to Kingston, Ontario and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Aside from airfare, his hotel bills for the five conferences amounted to $4,286.04.
Machado went to watershed conferences, a zero-waste conference (including a gondola ride for $22.72), a libraries conference, two meetings of the Government Finance Managers Association, a climate-change event, a UATA conference (unclear what this was), an IATA Conference (IATA may stand for International Air Travel Association; no further detail was provided), a Natural Capital LAB conference in Toronto, a Blue Ecology workshop in Kelowna, a HS Forum (unclear what this was), and a Fraser Basin Council meeting.
Machado travelled for ministry meetings, arbitration meetings, a peer review meeting and strategy planning. The Coast Clarion found receipts for the Hilton Hotel, the River Rock Hotel, the Executive Airport Plaza Hotel in Richmond, the Sheraton Hotel, the Renaissance Hotel, the Best Western in Courtenay, the Ocean Front Suite Hotel in Cowichan Bay, the Chateau Victoria, a Comfort Inn, the Coast Bastion Inn in Nanaimo and three unnamed hotels which could not be matched to specific events due to missing information.
In 2019, Machado’s salary was $137,030. According to the SOFI report, his expenses last year were $10,105.
How do Machado’s average yearly expenses of $7,866 compare to those of other CAOs? The Town of Gibsons has a population of 4,605.
In Sechelt (population 10,200), the CAO claimed $7,185.71 in expenses in 2016.
Janette Loveys, former CAO of the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) (population 29,970) averaged $13,515 in expenses per year.
Janyk is angry about the lack of transparency on the part of the Town of Gibsons.
“A year later, the documents for 2018 and 2019 are still missing. Why is [corporate officer in charge of FOI’s] Lindsey Grist not providing public records? What are they trying to hide?”
Janyk has not heard from the town that more information is forthcoming. “They are deliberately withholding information,” he says. “This is not an oversight.
“And where are the signatures authorizing these expenses? Who signed off on this? Where are the filled-out employee-expense claim forms? I know they have them, because they had to submit them for the SOFI reports,” Janyk said.
“If they had nothing to hide, they would bend over backwards to supply these public records. In my opinion, a refusal to do so totally erodes confidence in local government.
“I will not let this go,” Janyk said. “I will file another request with the town, and if they still refuse, I will ask the OIPC for an inquiry. Eventually, that can lead to a legally binding order. The truth will come out.”
Mayor Beamish would like to provide some context to the CAO’s expenses.
“Looking at the expenses of one member of council or staff does not tell the whole picture,” he said in an email to The Coast Clarion. ” I suggest that a better comparison is the year-over-year expenses for staff and council as a whole.
“I have served with councils where the majority of members worked and were not free to travel so it fell on me as CAO or other staff to attend conferences that benefitted the municipality as a whole.
“I have also worked with councils where the mayor or a member of council travelled extensively and was often away from the municipality. In those cases I [as CAO] or other staff did not need to travel as much,” he said.
“As CAO I have advised mayors, councillors and staff on their travel expenses because as CAO I was responsible to sign off on expense claims for the mayor and councillors and senior staff. In one case, where a mayor did not like my advice, his response was. . . ‘if you won’t sign my claim, I will get the Director of Finance to do it’ . . . In that case, the Director of Finance didn’t sign off either.
“Now as mayor, I sign off on the CAO’s expenses as the mayors before me have done, and I have not had occasion to challenge any accounts submitted in 2018, 2019 or 2020.
“All expenses are subject to a very detailed expense policy which, among other things, dictates where staff or councillors can stay (i.e. at the hotel where the conference is being held, or in a hotel at the government approved rate) and which other costs will be reimbursed.
“I have always held the view that expense reimbursement is necessary to recover costs but that it is not for profit. Not everyone I have worked with has always shared that view,” the Mayor said.
Interesting article. I’ll remind everyone that Mr. Machado on June 04 2019 during his famous unsubstantiated rant against a local citizens group, decried the use of taxpayers money. And I quote him here, “We know that, unfortunately, the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the Town is spending to defend its processes and meet its obligations in regulating development, comes directly from local taxpayers.”
I maintain that it would be a very good move if he watched our money all the time including when he is spending it. The law demands an open accounting so if the Town is stonewalling we who pay the bills will only assume the worst, which is that our cash is being frivolously wasted.
Of course, this article neither proves nor claims malfeasance on the part of Mr. Machado, so the verdict is out on that. What shocks me is the unprofessional shambles that the administration of travel expenses seems to be in. Doesn’t give me confidence as a taxpayer that the town’s money is being carefully managed. And why can’t they even handle a straightforward FOI? Do we have competent public servants here?
As i have said in this forum before,the questions would not be asked if business is conducted in a proper manner.Accountability is not just a word,It is what they are hired or elected for.
The financial accounting looks like a mess. The town needs to release the full FOI so we can see what’s really going on. This does not inspire confidence our tax money is spent properly.
More ‘cut & paste’, innuendo laden journalism by the Coast Clarion. The headline might just have read, ‘Disgruntled Former Mayor Grinds Axe’. This style of complainant driven (and complainant written) journalism is lazy, and it does a disservice to the community.
These are the completely reasonable expenses of a progressive, engaged and forward thinking CAO of a town that, let’s face it, is the gateway to the Sunshine Coast. Rather than (erroneously) emphasizing the population of Gibsons as being 4,600 people, we might instead ask to know more about the role of a CAO, and how having a good one like Emanuel Machado is good for a community. Would anyone read that article?
This story should have been presented as an opinion piece, not misrepresented as being actual journalism.
Nice comeback, I suppose from someone who has less evidence than the former mayor or The Coast Clarion. A smooth show of solidarity for the CAO without any work at all. Try again.
I find it hard to believe that the Mayor and Council have no influence over whether or not FOI requests are honoured. I find this very undemocratic. They are our elected officials, the CO is not.
The biggest takeaway from this article for me is the sheer sloppiness in accounting. These records should be easily accessible by a flick of a switch on the town’s computer. The resistance from the town to release these figures and the huge amount of disorganized information released says more about a cavalier accounting of expenditures. It shows a total lack of disregard and accountability to us, the tax payer.
I will resist the many comments that come to mind as I read the mayor-aspirant’s comment above. But one thing that may be worth pointing out: With a population of less than 40,000 on the entire SC, we have more politicians and more public servants than I can count. We could save a lot of taxpayers’ money by streamlining this over-administration.