Skip to content

TNRD to examine excessive spending by former CAO

Recommendation will go to the TNRD board on March 1.
24395636_web1_TNRD-LOGO

The chair of the Thompson Nicola Regional District is recommending a third-party independent review of the board’s past expenditures, following an investigation into the credit card expenses by former CAO Sukh Gill.

Ken Gillis said in a press conference Monday that the recommendation will go to the TNRD board on March 11 and he hopes it will be done as “expeditiously as possible.”

“We’re hoping a fulsome financial review will expose these things,” Gillis said. “There will be absolutely nothing kept from the public on that.”

TNRD Area E (Bonaparte Plateau) director Sally Watson, said she is pleased the board is finally addressing the issue of excessive spending, which has been part of a “culture of entitlement” at the TNRD for years.

“For me, the excessive dinners and the open tap were particularly irritating,” she said.

READ MORE: Year-in-review: TNRD to work on connecting people in 2021

She noted directors who did not support high-end hotel rooms and dinners at the Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention were not welcome to attend. In the past five years, she added, the board spent more than $26,000 networking with each other at the UBCM when it could have limited the costs to $5,000 for the directors’ banquet.

“None of us are saints. Indeed I did attend some of those dinners,” she said in her monthly TNRD update. “As a member of the board I was advised to ‘go along’ to get along and it would be easier to get my initiatives passed at the board level if I joined the group.”

She added directors should be paying for their own dinners and filling out their expenses themselves to be reimbursed.

Gillis said the board accepts “full responsibility and we are fully accountable” for the excessive spending by the former CAO. However, he said while there were things that came to light in the past few months that were “impossible to justify,” it was “unfortunate” that Gill was seen as “frittering away” taxpayer dollars.

He argued the vast majority of the money was spent on “legitimate items that needed to be picked up” such as booking hotel rooms for the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention. Gillis added a policy allowing two taxpayer-funded drinks at TNRD functions is likely to be eliminated, he said, while he expects credit card expenses will also be scrutinized.

He noted all expenses now have to be signed off the chair or vice-chair.

“Unless we want to incur the wrath of the public no excessive expenses are likely to be signed off by the chair in the future as far as I’m concerned.”


@ksinoski
kelly.sinoski@100milefreepress.net

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.