Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said he will support a motion by opposition Coun. George Affleck calling for the quarterly release of the mayor’s office expenses and use of his discretionary fund.
But the mayor says his office budget and expenses are already approved annually by council and are publicly available.
“I look forward to supporting Councillor Affleck’s motion next week and bringing an added layer of transparency of City Hall,” the mayor said in a statement.
Affleck has authored a motion for next Tuesday’s council meeting in which he says the mayor’s expenses should be routinely available to the public. While city council expenses are published quarterly in the city’s Open Data Catalogue, including the mayor’s travel expenses, the details of his office budget, which rose by nearly 24 per cent last year, are not published.
It took a protracted effort by a local journalist to obtain those records under Freedom of Information rules. Those records showed Robertson’s discretionary fund doubled in one year, largely to pay for consulting contracts given to former and current political staff.
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