By Stephen Vance, Editor
On, Tuesday July 14, a special meeting will be held in Meaford’s council chamber, when a Joint Compliance Audit Committee (JCAC) will meet in order to determine if a request for the audits of campaign expenses of two mayoral candidates who sought election in the October 2014 municipal election should move ahead.
Failed mayoral candidate Ray McHugh submitted requests for audits of the campaign expenses for Jim McPherson, who finished second in the 2014 election, and Barb Clumpus, who was successful in securing the mayor’s chair when the votes were tallied last October. McHugh finished in third spot.
Neither McPherson or Clumpus spent anywhere close to the $16,327 they were allowed to spend on their mayoral campaigns, with McPherson reporting campaign expenses of $9,462.85, and Clumpus reporting that her campaign spent $6,362. While neither of them tickled the maximum allowable expenditures, McHugh in his formal request suggests that another number needs to be considered – the magic number of $10,000 in expenses that would trigger a mandatory audit of campaign expenses. McHugh asserts that both candidates intentionally under-reported their expenses in order to avoid that mandatory audit.
Poppycock.
As a mayoral candidate, McHugh railed against unnecessary and wasteful use of municipal resources. He chastised his mayoral opponents and members of council for money spent on lawsuits and consultant fees, and now he is the instigator of what will likely prove to be a completely unnecessary waste of time and municipal resources.
The JCAC will consist of three members – one from Meaford, one from Georgian Bluffs, and the third from Owen Sound. Each member of the JCAC is entitled to a per diem of $150 per day plus mileage – the very sort of waste of money that McHugh would have opposed had it been an issue during the election campaign. Should the JCAC find that audits are merited, and if those audits find significant issues, then perhaps the time and small amount of money for the initial committee meeting will have been worth it.
McHugh, however, doesn’t appear to care about whether the end result is the mayor being kicked out of office, or that either candidate is punished in any way. As he told the Owen Sound Sun Times, he doesn’t want to see Clumpus removed from office, but rather he filed the audit requests to “see how the process works”.
Apparently McHugh simply wants a tuition-free civics lesson.
McHugh claims that Clumpus didn’t report expenses for brochures for her campaign, noting in his complaint that the Clumpus campaign had used a “multicolour, glossy, door hanger brochure” that doesn’t appear on her campaign expense report, and that the figure Clumpus reported for lawn signs seemed “surprisingly low” to McHugh, and he also noted that Clumpus did not report any mileage costs for her campaign.
In response, the treasurer for the Clumpus campaign – a chartered accountant – has said that the cost of the door hangers used in the campaign was indeed reported, but not as brochures, as they technically weren’t brochures but rather double-sided card stock, so the $636 cost was included under advertising costs. As for McHugh’s assertion that the $2,064 Clumpus reported for signs “seems surprisingly low”, the Clumpus campaign treasurer says that the campaign received two invoices for signs, one for $1,454 and the other for $610 for a total of $2,064. With regard to McHugh’s concern about the lack of travel costs reported by the Clumpus campaign, her treasurer says that Clumpus didn’t think it appropriate for her campaign contributors to pay for those costs, and he added that the costs would have been minimal and immaterial.
McPherson’s response to the alleged inaccurate campaign expense report was much more blunt than Clumpus.
“His campaign is aimed at casting aspersions,” McPherson says of the audit request filed by McHugh. “McHugh attempts this without providing a shred of evidence, and requesting a compliance audit. It seems we are all giving up our time on what I am hoping will be another lovely July day, nine months after we all believed this election process over, so that Mr. McHugh, a third-place candidate, can see how a process works.”
McPherson also noted the irony of the fact that McHugh in his audit requests mentions the lack of travel costs reported for both campaigns, yet McHugh himself did not report any travel costs on his own campaign financial statement.
Accountability and transparency in municipal politics is crucial. It’s a shame that the very processes that are there to ensure such transparency can be abused by a failed candidate who offers no evidence, no smoking gun, just assumptions and political jabs.
