Sep 26, 2012- 3:08 PM
The city’s transit department, not for the first time, is in the news.
It seems that the transit and fleet services department has accumulated a $530,000 budget overrun for overtime wages. Ward 2 Coun. Jacques Barbeau, chair of the operations committee that oversees transit, Doug Nadorozny, CAO, and Roger Sauve, manager of the department, are all quiet on the issue. Nothing to see here, folks.
This is the same department that squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Tony Sharma ticket scam.
There was no public admission of guilt, no taking of responsibility, no public firing or demotions and no money returned. There is still an outstanding police investigation.
You may remember the auditor general of Sudbury attempting to audit this dept. He met with stiff resistance from this group, aided by Jamie Canapini, the city solicitor.
Canapini actually thought city officials could withhold information from a city auditor. After all sides got outside legal opinions, paid by the taxpayer, Canapini reversed his position and advised his clients to co-operate with the auditor.
It got more bizarre when a complaint was lodged with the provincial ombudsman about the validity of in camera meetings to deal with the tenacious auditor.
I suspect they were trying to find a way to fire him. While the ombudsman dismissed the complaint, he received little co-operation from officials, and will be returning to Sudbury this fall to discuss ethics at a council meeting in an attempt to patch things up between his office and council.
The city could charge admission for this one. I wonder how many councillors will show up? Will any take the bus to get there?
Perhaps the transit department management and politicians charged with managing our tax dollars should just let the employees select the shifts that allow them to maximize their wages instead of operating the transit service to maximize the value for tax dollars. But maybe they are already doing that.
Brent Edwards
Greater Sudbury
