As we’ve come to expect from the City of Edmonton, they have effectively blocked the release of expense records for city councilors in Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. This is a long, repeated pattern, as Edmonton has denied our previous requests for councilor expenses.

The latest case is their blocking disclosure is the expenses of councilors Dave Loken and Jane Batty.

Now, the City of Edmonton didn’t “officially” deny the CTF the information, but they have resorted to their old trick of putting up unreasonable search fees for the information in order to ensure that they never actually have to release it.

In this case, they have declared that the cost of this information will be $731 for Loken and $993 for Batty. For several other councilors’ expenses that the CTF earlier requested, the City of Edmonton demanded $11,580. For Mayor Mandel’s expenses alone, the city wanted $4,630.

This was particularly odd considering the exact same Freedom of Information request made to the City of Calgary for the expense claims of its mayor and council cost the CTF – get this – $25 each.

Same goes for the provincial cabinet. When the CTF requested the expenses of Premier Redford and most of cabinet, the province only charged – wait for it – $25 per minister. Mind you, we had to wrestle a bit for the information, but in the end, the Premier and her cabinet did the right thing and released the information. They even went further brought in a nation-leading, proactive expense disclosure policy. This policy is now the gold standard for politicians to follow across Canada.

It’s not difficult or expensive to pull expense records. If the City of Edmonton maintains even the most elementary expense accounting practices, than it will have every councilors’ expenses listed, and have keep the corresponding receipts.

What is happening, is that the City of Edmonton wants to keep potentially embarrassing expense documents out of the newspapers.

Across Alberta, the province and many municipalities have heard the demands of taxpayers over the last year and put their expenses up on line for those paying the bills to see. Edmonton, has not.

Edmonton is hiding something. We deserve to know what.

You can view the FOIP response letters for Dave Loken here:

You can view the FOIP response letters for Jane Batty here: