Former TTC chair Adam Giambrone can expect a bill for the $3,500 he overspent on his $125,000 chair’s fund last year.

City councillors on the Toronto Transit Commission voted to issue a formal request that Giambrone pay back the amount he overspent and bring back his response to the commission in April.

It is the first time that a TTC chair has exceeded the budget that pays for additional office staff, travel and other expenses, said TTC general secretary Vincent Rodo.

The chair’s budget is in addition to the $50,000 office budget Giambrone received as a city councillor.

Calling Giambrone’s spending “remarkable and outrageous,” Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong said the public is “outraged when they look at a massive summary of expenses that he used for self promotion.”

A report on Giambrone’s expenses showed he spent about $72,000 on staff, $20,000 on a chair’s report outlining the TTC’s progress under his leadership and its future challenges.

A further $16,000 was spent on a video version of the report.

From May to October, Giambrone also spent about $7,000 on travel to public transit conferences.

Minnan-Wong called the expenses particularly inappropriate given that Giambrone knew he wouldn’t be running in the October municipal election.

Giambrone, who has dismissed the expense controversy as political, was in Montreal on Tuesday, according to his Facebook page.

The TTC also spent about $600 on each episode of a TV program Giambrone hosted. The transit commission paid for a streetcar and operator because it believed the program was beneficial to the TTC’s public image, TTC chief general manager Gary Webster told the commission.