The move last week came as a result of a report called ‘Enhancing Public Trust and Confidence’ released in May by Norbert Hartmann, a provincial advisor to the Ministry of Education.

The report criticized misspending practices by Toronto Catholic District School Board trustees and made recommendations for revising trustee expense policies.

The Ministry of Education followed up on the report by asking members of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees Association to review their policies and make further improvements to improve accountability and transparency.

Oakville Trustee Alice Anne LeMay, who represents the Halton board on the association, called on John Langill, superintendent of education, school services/policy and procedures, to draft a revised expenses policy.

“The minister said that based on that report, she wanted us to go over our policies again, and most boards had changed them, but she wanted us to tighten them up,” Langill said. “We did meet the legislation and what the minister said, but we added some guidelines.”

The board amalgamated its three policies, including trustee expenses, employee expenses and mileage expenses, into one policy in April 2008 following a prior mandate from the Ministry of Education.

Many checks and balances were already in place, according to Langill, but he said he worked with LeMay to make further improvements.

The most significant change to the policy is the request that trustees and employees, which encompasses any staff who may need to purchase something while on board business, provide detailed accounts of what they are spending money on when it comes to expenses and why.

“We’re asking people to be a lot more specific,” said Langill. “They were writing things on the back (of the receipts) like ‘meeting with parent’ and they would submit a receipt. The receipt was for lunch and we need to know the reason for the meeting and who the parent was. That wasn’t clear in our policy. A lot of the trustees and staff were not being specific enough.”

Trustees with the Halton Catholic board are currently allowed to claim up to $3,000 in expenses. Limits vary for other staff based on position and school budgets.

Trustees, as well as more senior staff members, such as principals, are given board policy cards, which are credit cards, for their expenses.

“That is what we are told and that is the preferred method,” Langill said.

“It’s basically a Visa card that has a person’s name on it that’s tied to their budget for their particular department. It is a lot easier for everybody, for our accounting purposes and transparency, that when we get a statement, you can match up items quite easily.”

The other two additions to the policy were more or less in practice already, but are now cemented in policy, Langill said. The first addition is that when paying with the board purchasing card, both the signed customer copy and the itemized bill must be submitted.

“We were doing it as a practice, but it was never put in the policy,” he said. “We didn’t have it in there, so I guess we didn’t really enforce it.

“But now we do, because we don’t want anything hidden. We want total transparency. Rather than hand in one customer copy that says $54 expenses at Staples, you have to show what you bought at Staples, every item and what it costs.”

The other pre-existing practice that is now policy is the stipulation that the director of education or the chair of the board has the opportunity to request additional information regarding expense claims filed by trustees or employees.

This additional information can be presented to the board through an information report at a board meeting or in camera, depending on the situation.

“If someone is asking a question from the public or someone internally wants to know, there’s an expectation that the director or the chair would look to get more information,” Langill said. “We want the public to know we are doing this because we don’t want any accusations of a cover-up, we want total transparency and accountability. This is another cost check we can run if we are worried about an expense. Total transparency is a goal of all of this.”

Burlington Trustee Joanne Matters was among the majority who supported the revised policy.

“I think in terms of accountability and transparency, it is very appropriate to make changes,” Matters said. “I think anything that brings transparency and clarity to the public is welcome.”

Not everyone was happy with the policy changes.

Burlington Trustee Bob Van de Vrande asked that the wording be changed so trustees and employees would have the option of submitting an expense claim without providing the name of the other party.

“There are times when staff members come with information or come with a request to me, who don’t feel comfortable having their name publicized because of possible repercussion,” he said. “It doesn’t happen frequently, but I don’t think it is fair to those individuals.”

Halton Hills Trustee Rosanna Palmieri agreed with Van de Vrande, citing meetings with parents who request to have their name withheld.

“How do we deal with parents or someone who doesn’t want their name circulated?” she said. LeMay said that because trustee and employee expenses are funded by public tax dollars, accountability is important, especially when it comes to names of second parties.

“I think we should be proactive and not reactive,” she said. “There is no reason why we can’t provide those names. We are a public body and we are spending public money, they should be there.”

Oakville Trustee Anthony Danko had mixed feelings on the issue. While he supported the unsuccessful motion to allow trustees and employees to have the option of leaving out the name of the person they were meeting with, he said that trustee and employee expenses should be made public.

“I think we should take it one step further and make it a requirement to provide trustee expenses to post them at hcdsb.org , as well as those going back 10 years, with the exception of personal information that would be sensitive,” he said.

Staff expenses are currently approved by Michael Pautler, director of education, while trustee expenses are given the stamp of approval by LeMay.

Pautler said transparency should be a top priority for the board, adding, “I feel a strong obligation to be able to demonstrate prudent and appropriate use of public funds.”

Some of the changes made to the policy stemmed from suggestions in Hartmann’s report. Van de Vrande cited his disapproval of using this report as a guiding light.

“The supervisor (Hartmann) is not in charge to make recommendations,” he said. “I think we are jumping the gun and trying to address a problem that isn’t a problem here. Toronto has a big problem, but we don’t have a problem and I don’t want to overreact and create a different problem, which probably doesn’t exist in the first place.”