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Bigger gets council's backing, multi-year contract announcement expected

Auditor General Brian Bigger has been awarded a multi-year contract to continue as the city's internal auditor, Northern Life has learned. While he couldn't go into details until a formal announcement is made, possibly this week, Ward 4 Coun.
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Brian Bigger's first audit of 2013 found issues with the city's arena and advertising contract, but concluded those issues didn't end up costing the city lost revenue. File photo.
Auditor General Brian Bigger has been awarded a multi-year contract to continue as the city's internal auditor, Northern Life has learned.

While he couldn't go into details until a formal announcement is made, possibly this week, Ward 4 Coun. Ron Dupuis confirmed Bigger received a new contract in discussions last month.

“We are going to be releasing more details about the auditor, but he's going to be with us for awhile,” said Dupuis, who chairs the city's audit committee. “It's not a one-year contract ... Brian seemed happy.”

The auditor's new contract is another twist in the often difficult relationship Bigger has had with city staff and council. First hired in 2009 when the department was created, he has received international recognition for an audit of the city's roads department, and an audit of Sudbury Transit uncovered almost $1 million in missing ticket money, of which more than $500,000 has yet to be recovered.

But Bigger has sometimes had a difficult time getting co-operation from city departments. He had to hire outside legal counsel to get access to documents during his Transit audit, and as recently as the audit committee meeting in March, he pleaded for more help from city council in ensuring he gets co-operation.

“Really, to make this work, I’m asking for — I need — the support of council,” Bigger said at the time. “It shouldn’t be this cat and mouse game ... We’re supposed to work with staff.

“We’ve experience delays in excess of 10 weeks in asking questions. It’s not right that people are able to do that.”

A sub-committee of councillors and top staff was created to ensure Bigger received the co-operation he was looking for, and in a sign of the strains on the relationship, members of that committee were surprised he didn't bring the issue to them.

Ward 7 Coun. Dave Kilgour asked Bigger at that March meeting why he didn’t he bring up problems he was having with the advertising audit two weeks earlier, the last time the subcommittee met.

“I find it disappointing … that if this concern about not getting feedback from staff was such a high concern, so much so you brought it to a public meeting before talking to us about it, that it wouldn’t have been your top priority at that last meeting a couple of weeks ago,” Kilgour said.

The uncertainty led to the departure of Carolyn Jodouin, the only other auditor in the department, who was a big part of the Impact of Changes to Road Design, which won the 2012 Silver Knighton Award from the Association of Local Government Auditors.

Jodouin left late in 2012 and Bigger wasn't able to replace her until March of this year, and the department has yet to produce an audit in 2013.

His relationship with city council deteriorated to the point that when his original three-year deal expired in 2011, he was given a one-year renewal. His department was subject to a review by an international group of internal auditors in 2012, which gave him top marks.

This spring, council hired James C. Key, a highly regarded auditor with the Shenandoah Group, to give them options on what to do with the city’s internal audit department in the long-term. Key concluded that keeping a full-time audit department was the most effective and cheapest way to proceed.

Key also recommended bringing in a more diverse audit committee that included members with an accounting background. Currently, the committee includes all of city council.

The July meeting of the audit committee has been cancelled, but Dupuis said the advertising audit is nearly complete and will be ready within days.

“We are going to get an audit report in our August meeting,” Dupuis said. “It was just to finalize that. Staff didn't have a chance to comment. That was the only reason we postponed this meeting.”
Bigger was unavailable for comment by Northern Life's deadline on Monday.

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Darren MacDonald

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