Tighter Controls on Council Spending OKd

Bills for the expenses of City Council members and the city manager when they attend out-of-town conferences will get closer scrutiny from now on before they are reimbursed.

The new policy, approved Monday night, requires expenses to be itemized and then approved by the council.

Councilman Tom Carroll was the only dissenter in the 4-1 vote. He said the new policy amounts to nit-picking.

“If we want to ‘flyspeck’ on how much some people spend, I think it’s a bunch of nonsense,” Carroll said. The city already has adequate controls on spending by council members and the city manager, he said.

Carroll said conferences attended by council members educate them and ultimately save the taxpayers money.

Councilwoman Gail H. Kerry, who raised the issue, said the existing system allowed a council member to simply submit a reimbursement request to city staff, who were unlikely to challenge it.

“This is like an employer asking an employee to approve his expenses,” Kerry said.

During debate on the issue, no individual council member’s spending was mentioned or criticized.