That was some messy exit seven members of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation board made this week.
In the wake of a searing report from the city's Auditor-General that documented the agency's failure to exert even minimal controls over costs large and small - from major contracts that weren't tendered or more duplicitously were split into smaller pieces to get around tendering requirements to egregious expenses for staff spa days and chocolates from Holt Renfrew - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford immediately suggested the board under whose watch all this had happened should pack it in.
While the demand must have stung, in that much of the misspending was hidden or kept away from the board, it wasn't unfair or unprecedented. It may seem quaint by modern standards, but those at the top long have been expected to take responsibility for the sins of their underlings. Even if they can claim blindness, the honourable course is not to try.
In any case, the board at first refused to quit, and even dispatched one of their own, Ron Struys, to fight back - essentially, to tell the press that despite the criticism, the board, if it didn't say so itself, had done a darned good job.
Conventional thinkers, inculcated in the gospel of the soft left that has dominated Toronto politics for decades, and which holds that it takes a government to raise a child and feed and house him too, duly sounded the alarm that perhaps the scandal would mean the end of public housing as we know it here in the centre of the world.
But Mr. Ford stuck to his guns, as did Jeff Griffiths, the Auditor-General, who told the board at an emergency meeting two days ago that the TCHC's flagrant disregard for spending policy was so blatant it left him "angered and outraged."
The jig was clearly up, and amid tears and hugs, the seven citizen members, including chair David Mitchell, stepped down. Two tenant representatives, elected, have said they will stay on until they are asked to quit by council.
Mr. Mitchell, whose appointment just three years ago was described by then-mayor David Miller as "incredibly important" because he was a former TCHC tenant, didn't leave without trying to put a principled spin on things: Why, the board couldn't possibly continue under a mayor who has been musing aloud about exploring privatization of the agency, Mr. Mitchell said, and besides, by making his resignation call through the media and not phoning him, Mayor Ford hadn't followed the process.
Yikes: That's a bit rich. It's the TCHC, after all, that hasn't been following the well-laid-out fiscal policies and procedures.
As Mr. Griffiths wrote, this of the expenses fiasco, "While the policies are adequate, they serve no purpose if they are not being followed. That is the case in many instances at the TCHC." Or, as he said about the problems with procurement, "TCHC has a clearly articulated procurement policy, as well as procurement procedures. Our review found many instances where the policy and procedures were routinely ignored."
In other words, the housing agency had everything pretty much right, on paper. Staff just ignored or breached the rules, or didn't bother learning them.
As troubling are the AG's remarks, direct and otherwise in the two reports, about the culture at TCHC, a culture where oversight by one level of management over the one below it was almost non-existent, where it appears staff - mid- and senior-level staff - felt free to procure supplies and services "from anyone they choose," where written contracts with suppliers in some cases didn't exist, where documentation of all sorts was woefully lacking and where, as with some contracts, rules appear to have been deliberately circumvented.
The AG didn't examine the expenses of board members, who are reimbursed as are others on the city's arms-length agencies, a combination of annual retainers and per diems for meeting days, to a total of $10,000 maximum per citizen member and $20,000 for a citizen chair - plus expenses.
I looked at a couple of the quarterly "review of board and CEO expenses," which take the form of reports to the agency's corporate affairs committee.
I'm no auditor, but even to my dim eye, these were startlingly devoid of detail.
One category, for instance, claims reimbursement for "mileage, taxi and parking costs incurred for business meetings, interviews/media, conferences/sessions and events/functions/networking," while another is for "Conferences/Seminars/Networking." In the report to the committee, at least the part that is publicly available on the agency website, there are no names or dates given for the "interviews/media," no dates attached and no explanation or receipts.
In one report, for the period July to December 2010, two board members, Mr. Struys and Zahra Dhanani, respectively claimed $6,520 and $6,869.06 for a trip to Sweden for a "study tour of Sweden (Housing)." The claims, which include "airfare, hotel, tours," give no breakdown of expenses, no dates, not even the places visited.
I'm sure it was a useful trip, the expenses legitimate and that the members worked terribly hard. I just wish there was some evidence of it.
cblatchford@globeandmail.com