Legal Cost of Mayor French’s Election Expenses Audit

Letter to the Springwater News from Rick Webster

In the last edition of Springwater News I focused on the unprecedented and unnecessary cost to us as taxpayers of legal expenses incurred by the mayor and council. I received a lot of feedback questions on what is the Election Compliance Committee and why they cost us all $59,290?

Good question. Simply, the committee is three citizens who have volunteered to examine the election expenses submitted by any candidate if challenged. Following the 2014 election, a ratepayer challenged Bill French’s expense filings. Mr. French opposed the continuation of this citizen examination process. At that time approximately $6,500 of French’s expenses was at issue and still remains in question.

Curiously, Mayor French has chosen to appeal the independent Committee’s decision to proceed with a more detailed audit. This means it costs us all more, but it also gives us the impression the mayor has something to hide. If so, what does he not want exposed? French’s legal manoeuvrings begs the question: Why should the ratepayers of Springwater pay for his unwillingness to have his election expenses reviewed or audited?

An amount of $14,632 also appears to have been spent to defend the Township. Why does the Township feel it necessary to hire a lawyer to represent them in Mr. French’s affairs? More remarkable is that I now know that the same lawyer representing the Township is also representing the accounting firm of Grant Thornton, who were the initial auditors.

Grant Thornton’s audit report was not accepted by the Compliance Committee because it failed to consider the evidence submitted in support of the ratepayer challenge of expenses. Why would the Township feel it is appropriate to hire, in any way whatsoever, the same lawyer representing Grant Thornton? On the surface it gives us all, at least, the impression of conflict of interest.

So let me be as clear as possible, the Township is using our tax dollars to pay for advice on three separate fronts: the Compliance Audit Committee, the Township itself, and for the Mayor (who is the defendant). It gets worse. French, who is the subject of this investigation, is also running up our legal bills on other fronts. This he does, as we await the court’s decision as to whether he should even be on council.

The sad part of this is that there are more expenses to come. I don’t think it is hard for us to imagine things becoming more disturbing as further details are exposed.

Submitted by:

Rick Webster

Aka; The Local Old Crony