Time For A WEDC/Tunnel Deal Autopsy

• “A post–construction audit is a standard procedure upon completion of a major project and is also an industry “best practice.”

I did not make this up. That is what the City Audit Department said in its Executive Summary on the 400 Building audit. It makes sense after all to learn what was done right and what was done wrong so that the next time around improvements can be made and mistakes made can be prevented.

What is so hard to understand about that? I would have thought it is pretty obvious. Or perhaps that might have been the practice when it seemed that the 400 building came in under budget and certain people could get plaudits for it.

If that is "best practice, " I wonder why this practice is not followed in other activities that the City and perhaps also the County are involved in, or at the least, for which they have paid out significant sums of taxpayer money.

Take the Undevelopment Commission. Please. It is effectively dead and gone, to be structured again in some shape at some time in the future. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what went wrong the first time around? I would have thought so. It seems obvious to me.

But our poor Mayor and perhaps also the County Warden as well. Eddie seems to be so intimidated by the words “forensic audit”

• “If he has information that is credible and leads him to believe a forensic audit is needed, I would urge him to come forward with that information. Otherwise this political attack on the development commission and creating or insinuating there are issues hurts our efforts to attract investors and jobs to our region."

Perhaps if the Tecumseh Mayor had just used the word “audit” then everything would have been all right. Oh yes, nothing is so attractive to investors but to learn that a City or County is afraid to have its books opened up for public oversight.

I certainly would like to know how many trips WEDC members and staff took to Europe. Wouldn’t you? After all, if our Mayor and two Councillors could tell us how much they spent in airfare on their one-day jaunt to Frankfurt, surely we should be able to find that out as well from the WEDC books and records. There is nothing to hide after all.

I’d like to know who if anyone had lunches at the Windsor Club, how often and with whom. Same for breakfasts at the Hilton. How many trips to Toronto were made and why and where did people stay and dine? I certainly would like to know how much was paid out to whom in fees and the basis of the payments. Who approved what and was there a system in place to ensure that expenses were not excessive?

What are the Mayor and Warden so afraid about? Why are they so concerned? Why are they so protective of an organization that no longer exists except in name only? It just makes one suspicious.

There are lots of other questions that I could ask if someone would only ask me but that is enough in the meantime.

Wait, I have a better idea, perhaps we should not call it an audit at all but rather an "autopsy." After all, the organization is effectively dead. The purpose of an autopsy:

• “is to learn the truth about the person's health during life, and how the person really died.”

Why shouldn’t we learn the truth about the Undevelopment Commission while it was carrying on and why it really died? It makes good sense to me.

And that brings me to the Tunnel Deal. You remember that transaction don’t you? It has cost us almost $2 million in legal and consulting fees and nothing has happened other than seeing the City of Detroit want $25 million more than we have supposedly offered to them. They want $100 million now.

Can you imagine what would have happened had we entered into this transaction. Even the Mayor has finally acknowledged that the Tunnel was probably not even worth $75 million today because of what has happened in the economy. I don’t think that he has acknowledged yet about what the DRIC bridge would do to the Tunnel volumes that make the transaction even more questionable.

He would never be able to live down such a poor deal and would have been blamed for horrific losses that probably would have resulted.

I really am disappointed that none of the members of the Traditional Media saw fit to attend at the recent Tunnel Commission meeting the other day. They must have received the press release about the Tunnel toll rate increase. Were they told that there was no need to attend the meeting because that was all that was going to be discussed? If so, who told him that? Remarkable.

Fortunately, I understand that four members of WeACT were there to protect the public interest. What is unfortunate, is that the Media was not there to listen to some of their comments/questions. It would have been nice to share this with other members of the public. Here are a few of them:

•  Just what was the approved Infrastructure Ontario’s loan amount for it is known that the full $75M was not an acceptable option?
  
•  Under the heading ‘Detroit Matters”. I have used a conversion rate of 1.25 to arrive at a total of $420,158.07. Add the 2007 costs, why was this matter pursued at such a cost in 2008 when it was apparent that the required $75 million financing for the purchase of a management concession was not forthcoming?
  
•  Now, the section headed “FOI Matters”. Please confirm that the first item of $43,483.36 is the cost of your defense against a freedom of information claim by concerned citizens. If you do confirm it, then it is clear that a citizen’s legitimate request for information was not only denied but the legal cost of that denial was made with those same citizen’s TAX DOLLARS? How you have the gall to do this is beyond my comprehension. This has to be the ultimate injustice. An insult!
  
•  I cannot begin to express the depth of my anger as you and members of council play fast and loose with taxpayer assets. Stop this disgraceful commercialisation of municipal governance and take care of the many priorities that exist on this side of the border.

Apparently, the Mayor had a very interesting attitude. His view was there is no need to reveal how much Infrastructure Ontario offered because the deal was dead. I guess that this the attitude that he and the County Warden are taking as well with WEDC. Who cares if there was a mess before or not, just sweep it under the rug. Ignore it and move on. No one needs to know.

It would be embarrassing, as an example, to the Mayor for the public to learn that Infrastructure Ontario might have offered a very low range for the amount of the loan. If Infrastructure Ontario was the lender of last resort because everyone else in the business had turned down the deal, it could well mean that the Mayor has wasted all this taxpayer money in legal and consulting fees on a deal that could never have been done.

I found it amazing that an outside law firm had to be retained for Municipal Freedom of Information Applications. I thought that we had inside City employees who had responsibility for this and who could do this work. I wonder what the difference in hourly rate would be between an outside lawyer and inside employee doing this work. Would the amount have been $43,000 or substantially less? If it was done on this file, how many others have outside lawyers been involved in and at what cost? It really is quite disturbing to me that so much money was paid out.

I come back to what I said before. The Mayor confirmed that the deal with Detroit was dead. Why would he not want an autopsy taken to find out what was done right and what was done wrong? I don’t see the distinction amongst an audit of the 400 Building and an audit of the WEDC and the Tunnel deal.

I just cannot understand what politicians are so afraid of. Why are they so reluctant to let the members of the public know what is going on? If they had let us in on it early on and kept us advised as they went along, no one would complain if circumstances arose that made a transaction one that ought not to be pursued.

However, all of these deals seem to be so secretive and so lacking in transparency such that it gives rise to questions in the minds of the public. When politicians refuse to answer questions over these deals and effectivley block information from getting out, then it just makes matters worse.

What is also very interesting, and very true, when one looks at Tunnel deals, airport deals, arena deals, Canal visions, new downtowns and so on is that it seems that some of our Politicians decided to be an elected not to run a municipality but rather to become entrepreneurs with taxpayer money.

If such is the case, I would prefer not re-elect Eddie Francis as Mayor. Rather, I would like to see if Warren Buffett is available.

I would like a real entrepreneur of the year involved, not a young one.