A pair of Toronto residents allege that Mayor Rob Ford violated municipal campaign finance laws during his 2010 election run and are requesting a compliance audit.
It’s the third request for a review of whether Mr. Ford followed the rules during his $1.3-million winning mayoral campaign. But Max Reed and Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler have gone to considerable lengths in their application, submitting a 17-page document that outlines their allegations after essentially conducting their own informal audit of Mr. Ford’s publicly released numbers. The audit request has been endorsed by York University professor Robert MacDermid, an expert on Ontario’s municipal campaign finance laws.
The other two applications, which will be discussed at a compliance audit committee meeting on Friday, use an April Globe and Mail article that “raised questions” about the Mayor’s finances as the only supporting documentation.
“Mayor Ford did a great deal of work in his campaign, I think we owe it to the process to do as thorough a job as we possible could as well. We certainly aren’t the experts though, that’s the job of the audit committee,” Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler told reporters at City Hall on Wednesday. “But we do have a very good faith belief that there were contraventions — I won’t speculate on the intent — but there were contraventions of the law.”
The men accuse Mr. Ford of improperly paying for campaign expenses, of wrongly borrowing money from his family’s holding company, of exceeding the expenditure limit by incorrectly categorizing costs, and speculate that he accepted corporate contributions, which are banned.
They are also suspicious of his $114,000 victory party, held in the same venue where he hosted his campaign launch but for less than a quarter the cost. Victory parties are exempt from the legal spending limit, and they want to ensure all those bills were in fact part of the celebration.
Adrienne Batra, the Mayor’s press secretary, said concerns raised by residents regarding Mr. Ford’s campaign finances will be discussed at Friday’s committee meeting, at which a representative from the Ford campaign will be on hand.
“The campaign has to have its financial statements audited prior to submitting them to Elections Toronto and of course that happened and it’s my understanding there were no concerns raised at that time,” said Ms. Batra.
Mr. Reed and Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler say their application is not politically motivated, and that they’re also probing other campaigns.
Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler is a community activist who took a lead role in opposing cuts to the Toronto Public Library board during Mayor Ford’s first budget. He also ran unsuccessfully as a school board trustee. Mr. Reed, a recent law grad, volunteered on the campaign of Councillor Mary Fragedakis.
Compliance audits have been requested and ordered for elected officials in the past.
“We hope to gain a level playing field,” said Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler. “Election finance is a fairly grey area of the law. It hasn’t been litigated on many occasions, so there are a lot of places where loopholes exists, where candidates of all stripes have taken advantage of and I’d like to bring some clarity to that so that everybody has a chance to run for mayor, councillor, school trustee, on a level playing field.”
Origin
Source: National Post
It’s the third request for a review of whether Mr. Ford followed the rules during his $1.3-million winning mayoral campaign. But Max Reed and Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler have gone to considerable lengths in their application, submitting a 17-page document that outlines their allegations after essentially conducting their own informal audit of Mr. Ford’s publicly released numbers. The audit request has been endorsed by York University professor Robert MacDermid, an expert on Ontario’s municipal campaign finance laws.
The other two applications, which will be discussed at a compliance audit committee meeting on Friday, use an April Globe and Mail article that “raised questions” about the Mayor’s finances as the only supporting documentation.
“Mayor Ford did a great deal of work in his campaign, I think we owe it to the process to do as thorough a job as we possible could as well. We certainly aren’t the experts though, that’s the job of the audit committee,” Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler told reporters at City Hall on Wednesday. “But we do have a very good faith belief that there were contraventions — I won’t speculate on the intent — but there were contraventions of the law.”
The men accuse Mr. Ford of improperly paying for campaign expenses, of wrongly borrowing money from his family’s holding company, of exceeding the expenditure limit by incorrectly categorizing costs, and speculate that he accepted corporate contributions, which are banned.
They are also suspicious of his $114,000 victory party, held in the same venue where he hosted his campaign launch but for less than a quarter the cost. Victory parties are exempt from the legal spending limit, and they want to ensure all those bills were in fact part of the celebration.
Adrienne Batra, the Mayor’s press secretary, said concerns raised by residents regarding Mr. Ford’s campaign finances will be discussed at Friday’s committee meeting, at which a representative from the Ford campaign will be on hand.
“The campaign has to have its financial statements audited prior to submitting them to Elections Toronto and of course that happened and it’s my understanding there were no concerns raised at that time,” said Ms. Batra.
Mr. Reed and Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler say their application is not politically motivated, and that they’re also probing other campaigns.
Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler is a community activist who took a lead role in opposing cuts to the Toronto Public Library board during Mayor Ford’s first budget. He also ran unsuccessfully as a school board trustee. Mr. Reed, a recent law grad, volunteered on the campaign of Councillor Mary Fragedakis.
Compliance audits have been requested and ordered for elected officials in the past.
“We hope to gain a level playing field,” said Mr. Chaleff-Freudenthaler. “Election finance is a fairly grey area of the law. It hasn’t been litigated on many occasions, so there are a lot of places where loopholes exists, where candidates of all stripes have taken advantage of and I’d like to bring some clarity to that so that everybody has a chance to run for mayor, councillor, school trustee, on a level playing field.”
Origin
Source: National Post
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