A provincial adviser heads to the Toronto Catholic board today to investigate trustee expenses after embarrassing revelations of spending abuses.Norbert Hartmann – who just last year was appointed to oversee the Dufferin-Peel Catholic board's finances after trustees there refused to balance the books – is to meet the Toronto Catholic board's director of education.
Hartmann is to help the board develop policies and guidelines around expenses, as well as a process for approving trustee expenditures after it was revealed that Trustee Christine Nunziata charged thousands of dollars in personal expenses to taxpayers, including vacations and clothes.
She has since been forced to vacate her seat, after missing four monthly meetings.
Chair Catherine LeBlanc-Miller said that after discussions with the education ministry, it was agreed the help of an adviser was needed.
She says the move will assure the public the board is doing all it can to rectify the problem.
LeBlanc-Miller herself has had to reimburse the board $4,700 after filing improper taxi, TTC and parking expenses.
After taking office, all Toronto Catholic trustees sign forms signalling their choice to receive an $800-a-month travel allowance or instead file transportation expenses.
But it was only in recently reviewing expenses that LeBlanc-Miller says she realized she'd broken the rules – and the board never flagged her filings so her mistake has gone on for several years.
"I fully admit that it was my responsibility to know" what could and couldn't be expensed, LeBlanc-Miller said in an interview Tuesday.
Former chair Oliver Carroll said in a letter to fellow trustees last week that LeBlanc-Miller should step down because the board's leader needs to be "above reproach" on this issue. He said she only dealt with the issue when he raised it.
"We are in the middle of a very public controversy over certain trustees' expenditures," Carroll said in the letter.
"I don't know how the chair can credibly speak on behalf of the board when she has taken money she wasn't entitled to."
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