Council has swiftly shown the door to the city’s auditor after a two-hour closed-door meeting following an external review.
Mayor Dave Bronconnier said Tracy McTaggart’s dismissal, effective immediately, was not because of her recent procurement audit report, where the question of fraud was raised. Rather, he said, it was because an external review of her office found it failed to live up to industry standards, meeting only two out of 11 standards fully and partially meeting another four.
“There are glaring gaps, a lack of skills, a lack of all the requirements necessary to complete the international standards,” Bronconnier said, adding the Pricewaterhousecoopers report came back with findings the city could not ignore.
“Unfortunately, that meant city council needed to take corrective and swift action to deal with that and today that action was taken.”
McTaggart recently criticized the city’s procurement practises, but Ward 11 Ald. Brian Pincott, the audit committee chair, said an audit on McTaggart was actually initiated a year ago.
She had six months left on her city contract, and the mayor said she would be paid out.
After a two-hour in-camera discussion, council came back to vote on recommendations and Ward 10’s Andre Chabot was the sole alderman to vote against McTaggart’s dismissal.
“I think to some degree council has some responsibility here, because some of it has to do with the policy council established for the auditor to follow, and in my opinion she followed those recommendations,” Chabot said.
“I think she should be given a chance to correct the deficiencies.”
But Pincott said the problem goes back a lot further and the next review will be in less than the recommended five years.
“We will look for a new auditor as soon as possible,” Pincott added.
