Brampton wards 7 and 8 Coun. Pat Fortini has raised serious concerns about other councillors using consultants as office staff.

According to Fortini and ward 3 and 4 Coun. Martin Medeiros, at least one of their fellow councillors and possibly more have been using a discretionary consulting account to bolster their office staff at a significant cost to taxpayers.

Fortini added his chief concern was transparency and accountability due to different accounting requirements for employees and consultants.

City staff confirmed consultants aren’t required to list what services they provided on their invoices.

Fortini, who chairs the city’s governance and council operations committee, brought forward a successful motion at the committee’s Sept. 16 meeting to stop payments to consultants working for councillors until city staff and council could review the situation and rules.

The committee did not name the councillors using consultants.

In January, council voted in favour of a new office staffing model increasing support staff for each councillor, from one to two assistants, at a cost of $1,040,988.

Previously, each councillor was allowed to hire one administrative assistant in addition to a shared council office assistant and a shared council liaison co-ordinator.

“When we established our budget, we never ever talked about outside consultants,” Fortini told committee. “They should be going through HR. Really, anyone can consult from outside and just pay them through an invoice.”

“At the end of the day, (the invoice) just shows one amount. So, where is this money going? How can we be accountable to the residents and taxpayers?” added Fortini.