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Town renews Joint Compliance Audit Committee agreement

July 17, 2014   ·   0 Comments

Council has approved the renewal of a Joint Compliance Audit Committee with five neighbouring South Simcoe municipalities (Adjala–Tosorontio, Bradford–West Gwillimbury, Essa and Innisfil).

The Audit Committee, comprised of voting members of the public (currently Heather McDonald, Lynn Worthington, Patricia Middlebrook, Jerry Switzer and Doug Downey) each representing one of the member municipalities.

The Committee’s responsibility is to examine the spending habits of municipal election candidates.

If a member of the committee believes that a candidate has not followed the rules, he or she may apply for a Compliance Audit of the Candidate’s election campaign finances. The Audit Committee as a whole would then decide whether the application should be granted or rejected. If the Audit Committee decides to grant the application, the Committee would then appoint an auditor to search the candidates books. After an investigation, the auditor would then report back to the Committee, the candidate, council, and the clerk of the municipality in which the candidate was nominated. That municipality would also be responsible for paying the auditor.

“If upon review of the report the Committee concludes that the candidate appears to have contravened the Act relating to election campaign finances, the Committee may commence a legal proceeding against the candidate for the apparent contravention. If the report concludes that the candidate did not appear to have contravened a provision of the Act, the Committee may make a finding as to whether or not there were reasonable grounds for the Application. If the report indicates that there was no apparent contravention and the Committee finds that there were no reasonable grounds for the Application, council is entitled to recover the auditor’s costs from the applicant,” reads a report from council.

In New Tecumseth, Jerry Switzer has agreed to sit on the Audit Committee for another four year term (2014–2018, the same as council). All of the other members of the current Committee have also been contacted and have greed to enter another term. The five member Joint Compliance Audit Committee was originally struck in 2010.

By Wendy Gabrek

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