Regina Mayor Pat Fiacco lost a bet and taxpayers had to pay for his gambling loss.

Talk about inappropriate.

You see, before the 2010 Grey Cup, Fiacco bet Montreal's mayor that Saskatchewan would win. The Riders lost and as a result, Fiacco had to raise an Alouettes flag at city hall, wear their jersey at a Regina council meeting and buy Alouettes season tickets for a year.

Taxpayers reading about the news must have thought - 'what a good sport.'

However, it seems the Mayor didn't actually reach into his own pocket to pay for losing the bet; new documents reveal he simply handed the bill over to Regina taxpayers to pay.

According to expense documents recently released for Regina's city council, Fiacco expensed $1,055 for Montreal Alouettes season tickets. But the ticket expenses didn't end there.

He also expensed $855 for Pats season tickets, $1,311 for Rider season tickets, $586 for tickets to an Oilers/Islanders exhibition game, $105 for Riderville Grey Cup tickets and $148 for a single Alouettes football ticket.

In some cases (the Alouettes season tickets for sure) the tickets ended up in the hands of charities. But why should taxpayers pay for politicians to hand out tickets and get all the glory from donating to a charity?

Instead of being charitable with other peoples' money, politicians should pay for their own bets and charitable donations. The savings could contribute to lower taxes; leaving taxpayers with slightly more money to donate to charities they support.

Here are a few other highlights and thoughts on the recently released council expenses:

1) Sask Party/NDP Win! - The Mayor and several councillors expensed a number of tickets to Sask Party and NDP fundraising events. The vast majority were for Sask Party events; including over $800 expensed by Mayor Fiacco for a Sask Party dinner and golf tournament.

These expenses are also inappropriate as no political party should receive fundraising dollars from government bodies. If politicians want to attend a party function, they can pay for it just like everyone else - out of their own pocket.

2) Disclosure - When it comes to disclosure of politicians' expenses, the City of Toronto does it best. Taxpayers can go online an actually see scanned receipts for every single expense submitted by Toronto politicians. While the Regina report has some details, there are still some expenses lumped all together without any details.

For example, the report notes Mayor Fiacco spent $5,355.78 in the "business meeting" category, but it doesn't tell the taxpayer where the funds were spent or why? Were these a bunch of legitimate lunches at reasonable restaurants or several five course meals at steakhouses with expensive desserts and lots of alcohol? More transparency would let taxpayers decide for themselves.

Finally, one has to ask why it is August 2012 and we're only now seeing what Regina politicians have expensed as of December 31, 2011?

One thing is for sure, given the problems with Regina's council expense system and what it allows, my bet is that an eager candidate seeking to win Pat Fiacco's job could win some votes by promising a mini revolution in terms of the out of date policies in this area.

http://regina.ca/opencms/export/sites/regina.ca/residents/open-government/open-info/.media/pdf/2011-mayor-councillor-expenses.pdf