Former city auditor Carolyn Jodouin will have to pay her own way to Nashville, after all.
Jodouin, who was a senior auditor in Auditor General Brian Bigger's office until leaving late last year, has received a lot of credit for an award-winning audit of the city's roads department.
Entitled “Impact on Changes to Road Design,” the audit found problems with the way recycled asphalt was inventoried – with 30,000 tonnes unaccounted for – and with ensuring that the asphalt being used in city roads matched the quality outlined in road contracts.
For their efforts, Bigger and Jodouin will receive the 2012 Silver Knighton Award at a May 6 ceremony in Nashville, Tenn. They're being honoured by the North American Association of Local Auditors, a group that includes more than 300 audit departments in cities in Canada and the United States.
In a press release, the group said the awards aim to encourage excellence among auditors, and improve municipal services in the process.
“Judges from peer organizations determined that this audit was among the best of 2012,” the association said in the release.
In an interview with Northern Life in March, Bigger said Jodouin was going to pay her own way to the awards, prompting former Audit Committee Chair Claude Berthiaume to suggest the city should help pay some of her travel costs.
“I was always amazed by the good work they do,” Berthiaume said at the April 9 meeting of city council. “And even though Carolyn is no longer an employee, I wonder if there’s a way we ... could help pay some of her expenditures to go to the awards.”
A staff report on the issue presented April 23 said there were no city bylaws allowing them to pay travel expenses of a former employee, and the only way to do it was to pass a special resolution authorizing the $2,300 expenditure from Bigger's budget.
But most councillors were wary of setting a precedent. Ward 2 Coun. Jacques Barbeau asked staff whether a council had ever approved such an expenditure. CAO Doug Nadorozny said to the best of his knowledge, they had not.
“I can't support this,” Barbeau said. “We're setting a bad precedent.”
Ward 1 Coun. Joe Cimino agreed, saying city staff win a lot of awards, “but they don't make the press.”
And Mayor Marianne Matichuk said it's a tough situation, since they would like to do it, but don't want to open themselves up to having to do it again in the future.
“We'd really like to do it,” Matichuk said, and congratulated Jodouin again.
Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altman was angry that Jodouin was put in such an “embarrassing” situation where they had to say no in such a public fashion.
She said Bigger should have made the request himself, so the matter could have been dealt with privately.
But Berthiaume said Bigger wasn't at fault, that the request was his idea.
“I take the blame for this one,” he said.
Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann as saying city council was put in an embarrassing position, when, in fact, she was referring to Carolyn Jodouin. Northern Life apologizes for the error.
