Ottawa's management of its fire department, its public-private partnerships and its staff's spending habits have all come under fire in an annual report by the city's auditor.

Alain Lalonde's three-volume report, released Wednesday, was highly critical of how the city is run and how it handles its finances.

Auditor General Alain Lalonde said Ottawa needs to re-establish controls to prevent abuse of city resources from continuing.
(CBC)

Lalonde said the city failed to set clear lines of accountability and must re-establish a system of financial controls to prevent abuses from happening in the future.

"You expect for a city of this size to have certain processes, certain policies … and this is missing in this city," he said.

The report, which was hundreds of pages long, detailed many of those abuses. Some were related to municipal staff, such as findings that in 2006 they:

• Spent $23.6 million in unauthorized purchases.
• Took $8 million in uncertified vacation and sick leave.
• Cost the city $1 million in abuse of its vehicles.
• Continue to misuse the city's internet and e-mail systems.
• Gave a summer student and too many other people access to the city's computerized financial system.

The audit found examples where employees were operating businesses from their desks at city hall or using city facilities and tools to fix their own vehicles. One road crew took three hours to fill one pothole but managed to visit two restaurants and a bank along the way. Another was arrested for a $10,000 fraud involving faulty refunds.

The report also criticized the city's operations and contracts.

Lalonde said effective management of the city's fire services is seriously impeded by provisions in its collective agreement and he questioned whether "public safety is truly the top priority."

"At the end of the day, I understand collective agreement and labour relation is very important but also what is very important is what is the best way to manage public money," he said.

Lalonde also alleged that:

• Ottawa lost $8 million from delays in a sewage treatment improvement project in Munster Hamlet.
• A $1.8-million contract was awarded for a wastewater treatment plant in Manotick without competitive bidding or council approval.
• The city's public-private partnerships are poorly monitored and not accountable enough.
• The city's vehicle fleet is oversized and $10 million over budget.
• There are problems with the way the city collects transit fares and cash from parking meters.

Lalonde is also concerned that when problems are identified, no one does anything about them, he said.

"When you talk to managers and they say 'It's not my responsibility, it's not my job,' or even we heard 'I'm not qualified to do that' … we have concerns, because we're talking [about] a $2.2 billion corporation," he said.

City manager Kent Kirkpatrick, who is responsible for fixing many of the problems, said he accepts much of the criticism but not all of it.

"Do I agree with the generalization or characterization that I'm hearing here today in terms of no accountability at the City of Ottawa? Absolutely not," he said.

O'Brien says report confirms why he ran for mayor

But Mayor Larry O'Brien said some managers at the City of Ottawa are just showing up to collect overtime cheques.

"Gently over a number of years they get to the point where they simply don't care, and I think that there may be a certain amount of that at a number of levels of management at the City of Ottawa," he said after the release of the report, adding that he wants those managers to take more more responsibility.

O'Brien praised Lalonde's critical assessment.

"I personally am delighted that the document was so thorough, so clear, so penetrating in so many areas," he said.

O'Brien says it confirms the reasons he ran for mayor last fall and launched his "thousand days of change" this spring to transform the way the city is run.

"The transformation process is identified to find the long-term solutions to many of the issues that we're dealing with today in the auditor general's report," he said. "You know, the task is identified in front of us, and now let's get busy. Let's get down to work."

Both O'Brien and Kirkpatrick said they will not fire anyone over the auditor general's findings