A clearer picture emerged Wednesday of former auditor general for local government Basia Ruta's brief, bewildering stint as the first watchdog on municipal spending.
She was fired in March after a report cited a host of problems with the office. She cleared out months ago and has filed a wrongful dismissal suit.
Now the Union of B.C. Municipalities has released a review of its members' experiences with the office. It comes under the heading of "piling on," given that Ruta is long gone. UBCM members could never have been expected to welcome her with open arms in the first place. Nobody likes audits and the municipal leaders were skeptical of the whole concept right from when Premier Christy Clark first proposed it.
But it's still a good illustration of how baffled and frustrated local government officials were when the new watchdog came calling. In brief, the auditor general for local government and her staff and the legion of contractors they hired left the general impression that they didn't have a clue what they were doing as they roamed around the province looking for things to audit.
The UBCM arrived at its findings by surveying officials in communities where the AGLG conducted audits. In effect, it's a casual audit of the auditor.
"The most striking finding from the survey is that only one of the 17 respondents agreed that AGLG staff and contractors demonstrated knowledge of local government during the audit process," says the UBCM.
The survey found several communities were audited for how they managed police services, despite the fact those are managed under a federal-provincial deal. Individual municipalities have almost nothing to do with the agreement.
In one case, the office spent a year auditing police costs shared between two communities before canceling the effort because it didn't have jurisdiction. It ate $20,000 worth of municipal staff time in the mean time.
In other cases, lack of knowledge led to additional meetings and repeated information requests.
"The contractor demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of local governments and regional districts," says the report.
That meant hours of explanation and recurring questions from audit team members who never grasped key points.
Some respondents found the audit teams scoped out their tasks well. But others were harshly critical.
Although the cost of running the dysfunctional office became a political target during the controversy that led to Ruta's dismissal, the UBCM said the costs municipalities spent complying with them were also significant. The average municipality devoted six to 10 staff to dealing with the AGLG questions and racked up more than $12,000 in costs.
One respondent summed up the prevailing view of being frustrated by being asked the same questions over and over again by auditors who did not understand the business.
All but one of the 17 respondents said their audit was completed on time.
High turnover, lack of continuity and changing approaches created delays.
All the stumbling around wasting time was largely hidden from view until the AGLG's production numbers came to light. It managed only two audits in two years after promising to deliver 18.
That led to a review by the council that was overseeing the office. It found widespread problems that eventually forced a showdown between Ruta and the government, which culminated in her dismissal.
The government later promised to overhaul and revamp the office. But based on the survey, the UBCM said local governments remain unconvinced of the value of the office.
Only two of the 17 respondents said that the work produced to date has much value. It will take a lot of consultation to revamp the outfit properly. The general thrust of a number of recommendations is to basically find people who know what they're doing, or teach the ones there how to do their jobs.
But the office has dug itself into a deep hole in terms of credibility. There'll be more than the usual suspicion as it tries to dig itself out.
