April 14, 2003
It is very important for me as a commissioner to send a message to employees of the city of Toronto and other witnesses that they can tell their stories with confidence, that they will be taken seriously and will be dealt with as expeditiously as possible, and in public."
This powerful statement, made by Madam Justice Denise Bellamy, head of the MFP inquiry, came last week after an effort by the city to delay a city employee’s testimony on the blatantly self-serving grounds that they wanted to investigate if her testifying "could violate her legal rights as a whistleblower."
Following this sharp rap on the knuckles for the city, another bombshell was delivered as the sad and sorry saga of the Great Computer Leasing Scandal continued to reveal more of its secrets to the no-nonsense Madam Justice Bellamy and her Inquiry.
Taking the stand was former city employee Paula Leggieri, whose employment came to an effective halt after she spoke with inquiry investigators last summer. According to news reports, Leggieri was employed as a leasing administrator in the office of Kathryn Bulko, head of the purchasing department’s contract management office, which had been established to deal with the city’s contractual relationship with MFP. Put to the basics, Ms. Leggieri’s evidence revolved around her assertion that there was a relationship of some kind between Bulko and Dash Domi, the MFP salesman responsible for the city account. It would appear that Kathryn Bulko sometimes referred to Domi as "my boyfriend," and that the relationship affected Leggieri’s attempts to draw attention to problems with the lease. In her evidence, Leggieri said that Bulko and Domi danced together once in a manner which was "very close…it didn’t seem like the normal client-vendor thing to do." Asked if the relationship was more than platonic, Leggieri replied that she didn’t much care, but that it certainly hampered her efforts to resolve serious issues regarding the management of the leases. She also said that Bulko told her that "re-writings" of the leases were a "done deal," approved by city treasurer Wanda Liczyk.
Dash Domi bypassed Leggieri by "scooping" documents from her desk and delivering them personally to Chief Financial Officer Wanda Liczyk for approval. Bulko never acted on complaints from Leggieri that the equipment-leasing terms were being extended beyond the authorized time spans, that the rates being charged were steadily climbing, or that the City was acquiring substantial amounts of new equipment that did not match any of the purchase orders.
Leggieri’s evidence that Bulko asked her to assist Domi in marketing MFP to the TTC, and help him sell services to other city departments, provides a revealing glimpse into the subordinately pro-MFP culture which Wanda Liczyk and others had created and spread throughout the upper echelons of the City’s administration.
It was around that time that the inquiry’s lawyers came knocking. Although Leggieri claims to have been threatened by Bulko before being interviewed by the investigators, she fully co-operated with them, and claims to have subsequently been fired. Or perhaps more to the point, as I interpret it, when going on sick leave in November 2002, she says that she was told by Bulko "The writing’s on the wall. You don’t have a job. You put two and two together." In any event, when the contract office was closed down following the cancellation of the MFP contracts, single mother Paula Leggieri was the only staff member to not be given a job elsewhere.
And, there is another aspect to this matter that I find very disturbing. In her testimony, Paula Leggieri refers to GST and PST totaling almost $3.5 million that was owed to the city by MFP regarding sales taxes. As reported by Peter Small in the Toronto Star on April 10th, "Leggieri said she also discovered, on her own initiative, that MFP was not reimbursing the city for PST and GST that the city had already paid on equipment it had sold and leased back from the company. She testified that she pushed the issue with higher level bureaucrats and hounded MFP, finally succeeding in getting a $1.6 million GST refund, but could not get the $1.8 million in PST back." I wonder to what extent the Finance Department should have been on top of that! Proper recording of assets, including receivables such as these, is the responsibility of the CFO, to my knowledge and belief.
As I said above, the "sad and sorry saga" continues. There may well be many more heroic individuals such as Paula Leggieri waiting to apprise us further of what appears to me to have been quite possibly a deliberate and systematic looting of the city and its taxpayers for a good number of years. We shall see.
Correction: In last weeks article "Sid Ryan comes to town," I refer to him as having previously run for MPP in Scarborough East. That should have been Scarborough Center.
Comment: Those of us who have met him were saddened to hear of EMS General Manager Ron Kelusky’s arrest for "driving while impaired" in late February. Ron used to manage the city’s Parking Tags office, and I met him on several occasions in my capacity as a union officer. I have the utmost respect for Mr. Kelusky, and I hope that he can use his present leave of absence to deal with any personal issues needing attention. He is a vital member of the civic administration, and it is important that his services not be lost.
Jeff Goodall worked for the Metro Treasury and City Finance Departments for 25 years, and served as a member of the CUPE Local 79 Executive Board for 14 of those years.