Mayor Rob Ford is asking the courts to quash a city committee’s order for a full audit of his unorthodox campaign funding.

Ford’s lawyer Tom Barlow filed notice alleging the compliance audit committee “erred in its interpretation and application of the provisions” of the Municipal Elections Act and “in determining that the application satisfied the threshold for granting a compliance audit.”

That’s a change of heart from last week, when the mayor said he doubted he would appeal the compliance audit committee’s May 13 order.

“There is nothing to hide so let them audit all they want,” he told the Toronto Sun.

The committee’s three citizen appointees, all with expertise in election rules, voted unanimously to launch the audit based on a detailed request by Toronto residents Max Reed and Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler.

Reed and Chaleff-Freudenthaler focused on questions about Ford’s family company, Doug Ford Holdings Inc., paying more than $77,000 in early campaign expenses. The campaign cut the company a cheque for the full amount one year after the current mayor declared his candidacy.

If that was a loan, Ford may have broken a provincial law stating candidates can borrow from banks and other recognized lending institutions, they said. If the no-interest terms constitute a donation, Ford broke a city ban on corporate donations.

Barlow argued at the meeting the holding company was merely one of the campaign’s many “suppliers” of goods and services, including the salary of the campaign’s policy director.

But committee member John Hollins, a former chief executive of Elections Ontario, said that, without interest or a markup, payment coming that long after the initial outlay “looks like it’s just a throughput of cash.”

He also agreed there were questions about whether some events listed by Ford’s campaign as fundraisers, and therefore exempt from a legislated $1.3 million spending cap, had fundraising as their primary purpose.

In his four-page appeal notice to the Ontario Court of Justice, Barlow repeats an argument the committee rejected — that Ford’s extension from the city until June 30 to file campaign documents makes an audit order now premature.

Chaleff-Freudenthaler, a Toronto Public Library board member who has challenged Ford’s spending cuts, said an appeal on the last day possible shows the mayor “fears greatly what’s going to come out in an audit.

“He’s pulling out all the stops, after saying the contrary.”

If the court allows the audit to proceed, and the findings lead to a successful prosecution, possible penalties for breaching the Municipal Elections Act range from a fine to removal from office.

The committee declared at the May 13 hearing that a similar request from another resident, Ted Ho, was moot because it raised the same issues.

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Since then, another Toronto resident, David DePoe, has filed another request, which the compliance audit is scheduled to hear June 6.

Ford could not be reached for comment.