Staff will return to council with the cost of Mayor Linnsie Clark's information request. (Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News)

By Eli J. Ridder | @EliRidder

Medicine Hat city staff to research costing of mayor’s requested expense review

May 6, 2024 | 11:57 PM

Medicine Hat city staff will research the cost to find a set of employee expenses Mayor Linnsie Clark has requested and return to council later with the results, an apparent middle ground achieved Monday by elected officials.

In a 5-3 decision after nearly two hours of heated deliberation, council moved forward with the compromise motion as councillors had different responses to Clark’s ask.

While all of council agreed checks and balances were important, several councillors argued that Clark’s request wrongly indicates there is something inherently wrong with the expenses of high-level city staff.

Couns. Robert Dumanowski, Cassi Hider and Darren Hirsch, who voted against the motion, said there were already checks and balances in place and that Clark’s written request went too far.

“The language surrounding the concept of accountability and transparency today has the potential to insinuate nefarious action or expense by senior leadership,” Dumanowski said.

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Coun. Robert Dumanowski give comments on Mayor Linnsie Clark’s financial expenses request. (Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News)

“The recent request made under the guise of transparency and accountability have instead started to sow seeds of discord and mistrust,” he added.

“It is my concern that this request is rooted on nothing less than baseless accusation and supposition. Political rhetoric holds no position in healthy discourse.”

Hirsch called the expenses Clark asked for an “accusation”.

Coun. Alison Van Dyke felt caught between two tricky decisions in a “no-win” scnario.

Van Dyke said the written inquiry from Clark has “caused reputational damage to our city, staff and council”, adding the request has exacerbated harassment of the city’s employees.

“This request has put me in an extremely awkward position,” Van Dyke told council.

“If I decline to support this information request, the public perception is that I am supporting the concealment of information from the public. If I support this request, I am indicating a lack of trust in our administration,” she said.

“Neither of these things are true.”

Clark said she “vehemently” denies using her written request as a weapon against administration. The mayor added after the meeting she wouldn’t assume it would cause reputational damage to reveal what staff are expensing.

Couns. Ramona Robins, Shila Sharps and a few other councillors said they found some of the asks included in the mayor’s written inquiry important, agreeing with the importance of transparency at city hall, but also raising concerns the request targets certain staff members.

Robins tried to pass a series of motions — some successful, some not — that would bring about some of the information Clark wanted and change some of the policy around expenses.

Clark said getting staff to look into the cost of gathering the information for the expenses and the money reallocated by the city manager in 2023 is a partial win after several delays.

“I do wish that we would have gotten to this point a little earlier,” Clark told reporters following Monday’s public council meeting.

“I’m happy that we seem to be a on a path where that might be coming forward to council,” she added.

Clark’s maintained she’s entitled to the six items she included in a written request to council months ago.

“Hopefully once we get the costing, we can have a debate about getting that information to council,” she said.

Clark said she hopes the price tag attached to finding the financial information she has asked for will come forward at council’s next regular meeting on May 21.

The mayor said she is not looking for a specific issue to crop up in the expense reports.

“I’m not afraid to sign off on it, but I know for myself that I have to follow the policy,” she said.

“It’s not that someone did something wrong, they’re following a policy. But I just think maybe there’s room for improvement in the policy.”

When Clark’s request first appeared before public council on April 8, the meeting ran long and no discussion on the item took place. However, councillors asked the mayor to submit a document explaining the reasoning behind her ask by the next meeting.

Clark sent the explanation to councillors’ inboxes just minutes before the April 22 meeting. Councillors voted unanimously to push back Clark’s item to the next regular meeting, against Clark’s wishes.

The fierce debating around Clark’s request that, in part, asks for City Manager Ann Mitchell’s credit card expenses and how she reallocated funds at city hall in 2023, a year during which Mitchell made organizational changes.

Those structural changes were at the root of a tense exchange between Clark and Mitchell at an August 2023 meeting that led to a third-party investigation and council placing sanctions on the mayor while cutting her salary.

For her part, Mitchell said she had no problem with having her expense list brought forward to council but raised concerns over including the financial information of the managing directors in a report to council.

Mitchell was also wary of exposing sensitive financial data, including information related to severances.

Clark’s six asks

Here’s a summary of the six requests by the mayor:

• the number of city employees paid or reimbursed for living expenses and the basic terms of all severance agreements, including precise sums, for 2020-23;
• basic terms of all severance agreements, including precise sums, the date of the severance agreements and the positions that were severed, from 2020-23;
• a detailed accounting of all funds reallocated by the city manager in 2023 and the top staffer’s itemized expense and statements of her “P-Card” — otherwise known as purchasing card;
• staff turnover statistics for 2020-23, by month;
• the city manager’s 2023 itemized expenses and purchasing card statements.
• each managing director’s 2023 itemized expenses and purchasing card statements.

The full written request can be viewed at MedicineHat.ca.