Regina doesn’t know how much its spending on gift cards
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the City of Regina to explain why it can’t provide an answer to an access-to-information request asking how much the city spent on gift cards last year.
“Taxpayers expect the city to guard their money like it’s their own,” said Gage Haubrich, CTF Prairie Director. “Other cities and governments are facing gift card spending scandals because they weren’t keeping a close eye on what was being spent.
“If Regina doesn’t know how much is being spent on gift cards, how can it figure out how to prevent wasteful spending or fraud?”
The CTF filed an access-to-information request with Regina asking how much money the city spent on gift cards last year. The request was filed because of taxpayer-funded gift cards scandals in other parts of the country.
Regina said that it “does not maintain a dedicated tracking system nor accounting code for gift cards.” The city also estimates that it would take more than 200 hours to search records that might contain information about gift card purchases.
Most purchases of gift cards would have been done with purchasing cards, according to the city. The city provided the CTF with the latest copy of its purchasing card policy, but the city does not have a policy that is related specifically to the purchase of gift cards.
The City of Richmond has recently admitted it cannot account for $295,000 worth of gift cards.
The British Columbia government also recently capped the purchase of taxpayer-funded gift cards at a $100 maximum after documents obtained by the CTF revealed that government bureaucrats making six-figure salaries were receiving hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards as gifts.
The City of Regina hiked property taxes by 10.9 per cent this year, costing the average city taxpayer $276 more per year.
“Every single dollar that Regina taxpayers send to the city needs to be accounted for,” Haubrich said. “The city needs to immediately figure out how much it is spending on gift cards every year and release that information to taxpayers.”