… and did not like what he saw today.

Auditor General Jeff Griffiths responded this afternoon to a request from Ward 3 (Etobicoke Centre) Councillor Doug Holyday, who has spent much of the last decade steamed about the $53,100 office budgets that councillors have to spend on everything from dinners out to coffee machines to the actual cost of running their offices each year. He’s gotten a lot of attention in the media, but scant little among his colleagues, who by and large like those office budgets just the way they are.

That may change, after Griffiths’ response to Holyday’s request, to look more closely at the generally unregulated way city councillors spend their budgets. Griffiths gave a preview of the report he’ll be sending to the January meeting of the city’s Audit Committee.

Griffiths will be recommending a much more accountable system. Councillors expenses ought, he said, to be posted online every quarter - letting the public look and see who’s ordering multiple bottles of wine with their meals, who’s taking taxis from Metro Hall to Bolton, and who’s printing up newsletters and photocopying reports.  There should be an independent body that oversees and approves unusual expenses, and those expenses should be routinely dismissed by the city clerk. The rules for what is and is not a business-related expense - and council will have to think hard about whether expensing the cost of getting to or from work is allowable. If so, the expenses would become taxable benefits.

It’s good to see Griffiths - Toronto’s politically independent watchdog - taking such a reasonable eye to what has for the past decade been such a politically charged, and often petty, debate.