tariqata
Active Member
I've never been comfortable with the fact that Rob and Doug don't use their office budget. That's what it's there for. I'm fine with my taxes being used to keep a mayoral or councillor's office functioning. But I'm not fine with not knowing where the money comes from if they chose not to use mine. For all we know lobbyists or the mob or drug dealers or some other organization are donating money for favours from Rob or Doug. I mean, there's no paper trail, right? From what I understand there are no receipts and therefore we have no idea where the money comes from, correct?
I know that Ford was cited in 2007 for not reporting his personal spending on office-related expenses. In later years, he has reported some spending - but we have no way of knowing if it reflects the actual cost of running the Mayor's office (ditto for Doug Ford). The fact that it's so much lower than other councillors' suggests to me, at least, that either they're not spending what they need to spend to serve their constituents properly, or that they're not reporting what they actually spend.
Spending data are here: http://app.toronto.ca/tcer_web/Controller?action=1&selectedYear=2012