One of the obligations of council's standing committees is to oversee the use of public funds.

In the report last month by audit staff, which finally revealed the secret plan, the public was told that the payments were hard to monitor because proper coding to follow the city's transactions was not used. It also noted that senior staff was approving the payments without notifying or getting consent from council.

Questions are also mounting regarding the length of time it took for the investigation to unfold, including the sudden departure of the woman who initiated the internal probe, audit head Catherine Spence.

She left the city while the audit was underway, and while she reported directly to the chief administrative officer.

At the time, the city did not have a permanent CAO, and it's unclear who made the decision to let Spence go and whether or not they were involved with the secret payment practice she was investigating.

There are also questions about why it took city officials more than nine months from when the audit fieldwork concluded in September, 2016, to issue the findings publicly.

"It would have had to be senior staff to have arbitrarily handed out extra money to people without going to council," Bauld said.

He agreed with Mayor Linda Jeffrey’s assessment that the system of secret bonus payments devised by senior staffers and paid out to other non-union employees — and possibly to themselves — for years while elected officials were kept in the dark “is at best serious negligence, and at worst corruption.”

John Corbett was a member of Brampton’s senior leadership team for decades, both as planning chief and then as chief administrative officer (CAO) from 2012 up to the termination of his contract in 2015.

Asked recently by The Guardian if he knew of the OPR practice, had approved it and whether he received such payments, Corbett said: “I’m really not equipped to answer that in time or verify it."

He added he has never heard the term Outside Policy Requests.

“Over my 40 years there, there were all these terminologies for different things and the policy I guess changed from time to time. But I’d have to have to do some real memory digging to remember details and specifics.”

Brampton's current CAO, Harry Schlange told The Guardian that city staff reached out to Peel Regional Police Chief Jennifer Evans via written correspondence on June 22, outlining the June 21 resolution by council requesting a full police investigation into any possible wrongdoing.

Asked when he first became aware of the internal audit work to investigate the secret payment plan, and when the audit was completed, Schlange said he was briefed about the 2015 audit work plan upon taking up the chief bureaucrat's job in Brampton in May 2016.

The audit report states that the fieldwork to put the report together was completed about the beginning of September.

About the same time, Schlange began a major restructuring of senior staff that eventually saw dozens of non-union employees depart city hall.

But Schlange said the "September 2016 restructuring was not linked to the audit."

Asked if any of the 167 non-union staff, according to the audit report, who received a payment without council's knowledge were let go in his restructuring, Schlange said: "The city will not be citing specific individuals, including status of their employment."

It's unclear if city officials know the names of staff who received the payments or the staff who approved them. The city has stated it won't reveal names.

But a police investigation would likely reveal some of those names, if any charges are laid.

Schlange was asked if any staff released in his restructuring were paid severances — even though they might have been involved in the secretive payment scheme and therefore could have been let go with cause without any severance.

He offered the same response, that the restructuring was not linked to the audit.

Asked how much the city paid out in severances for his restructuring plan, Schlange said, "Severances as a result of organizational changes in 2016 have been estimated at $8.5 million."

That is more than double the $3.5 million to $4 million figure Schlange stated last year when he was asked how much severances for his restructuring would cost.

Asked where specifically the total amount for severances will appear in the city's 2016 budget document, he said: "The city includes severances as part of the total 'salaries, wages and fringe benefits' line of its annual end-of-year financial reports."

Schlange said these end of year financial reports for 2016 are "not yet public."

It's unclear if police will investigate severances paid out to non-union staff who might have been involved with the secret OPR payment program.

Bauld said a police investigation is needed to get to the bottom of things.

“It will be up to the police to decide whether it was poor accounting or it was malice. But there were no provisions for (these payments). It’s like making up a rule and not telling anybody about them."

City officials described OPRs as “discretionary salary increases determined by the operating department heads” that were “outside of council-approved policies” and documented procedures.

Payments to individuals ranged from as little as $123 to more than $95,000, the audit report said. A total of $316,000 was paid to just eight employees.

The Brampton auditors said that bonuses were not authorized under relevant rules and that over time OPR “requests were approved for reasons beyond its initial intention.” They added that with no oversight or formalized processes “the OPR practice became mismanaged.”

The report notes that “favouritism” was listed as one of the top 10 reasons to allow an OPR bonus.

The city stated that there was no OPR line item in the annual budget. It also noted that council approval for the OPRs was not sought.

The auditors noted a sudden drop to almost no OPRs after 2014, the year of the last municipal election.