Few details about fewer calls to city fraud, waste hotline

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This article was published 12/04/2023 (1270 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The number of complaints to the City of Winnipeg’s fraud and waste hotline has declined over recent years. However, the municipal government is sharing few details about that trend — sparking some calls for greater transparency.

The hotline received 79 calls of alleged wrongdoing that included 110 specific allegations in 2022, down from 139 reports and 182 allegations in 2020, according to a city report released Wednesday.

The report offers a list of actions taken after some allegations were found to have merit, which included: terminating an employee for “abuse of leave entitlements;” providing an “appropriate level of discipline” to an employee found to be operating a personal business during work hours; taking “immediate remediation” over an unspecified “unsafe workplace” issue; and firing an employee who was deemed to be “not in accordance with established procedures.”

An ethics expert said revealing more information about the offences reported to the hotline later deemed to have merit, and the related penalties, could benefit the public while still protecting the identities of the affected employees.

“I think a failure to provide more information is unfortunate. I think the city should reconsider the amount of information it is providing and consider providing more and more useful information. I think it would be good for the public… (and) the morale of city workers,” said Arthur Schafer, founding director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba.

For example, Schafer said, there’s a legitimate public interest in knowing what disciplinary measures the city deemed “appropriate” for someone who was found to operate a private business on city time, while providing little detail could feed into public cynicism.

He said revealing more information could reassure hard-working civic employees their few colleagues who don’t follow the rules will face consequences.

While he expressed concern a fraud hotline might reinforce a stereotype that public servants are inefficient, Schafer said providing sufficient detail on discipline and offences linked to that reporting could benefit citizens.

“I think that if governments can show, can demonstrate that they do monitor waste and abuse and conflict of interest… that can be a way of increasing public confidence (that) we run a tight ship… There is some abuse and exploitation of resources that occurs in every enterprise, whether it’s public or private.”

In 2022, the number of allegations of theft, embezzlement and fraud to the hotline also fell to 25, down from 66 in 2020.

The 2022 update only includes figures dating to 2020.

Council’s finance chairman said he’d appreciate more information on the hotline for elected officials and the public.

“I think there’s a place for… elected officials to know where discipline has been used so that we know that management is working properly and that the (hotline) is doing what it (was) formed to do… (And) taxpayers pay for all of our salaries, whether it’s an elected official or a public servant. I think it’s important the public knows that there are safeguards in place,” said Coun. Jeff Browaty.

Browaty stressed the vast majority of civic employees are honest and hard-working, but said the fraud and waste hotline is a useful tool to help monitor an organization with more than 10,000 employees.

He plans to ask why city staff believe the number of fraud hotline reports are declining, since the report doesn’t draw conclusions on whether public use of the reporting line or employee behaviour itself has changed.

Jason Egert, Winnipeg’s acting city auditor, declined comment on the matter until after council’s executive policy committee reviews the report April 18.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga