Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 11/02) - A city councillor is under fire for submitting late expense reports.

Robert Hawkins could lose his ability to draw advance payments from the city after filing an expense report almost two months late.

Last year, Hawkins was a month late filing another expense report.

Wendy Bisaro, who was a month late in submitting one of her reports, led the charge against Hawkins last week.

"This is not the first time that has happened, and I felt we needed to somehow put a point forward that this isn't acceptable."

"So I suggested perhaps the next time he wanted to go somewhere that he not be given an advance."

Rosalie Power, assistant to the mayor, will draft a report with recommendations to council.

"What we want to do is look at everybody's reporting history and see if it's really as big a problem as it might have appeared," said Mayor Gord Van Tighem.

Hawkins said he believes the criticism was politically motivated.

"If they want to gain popularity or authority by trying to take a shot at me, let them. That's politics. I'm not going to sweat it, it's small stuff," he said.

In the report at issue, the city gave Hawkins a $1,100 advance for the purchase of a plane ticket to attend the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention in Hamilton, Ont. in June. His total bill was $2,900.

The other councillors who attended the conference, Dave McCann, Ben McDonald and Kevin O'Reilly, submitted their reports within the three-week deadline.

"Simply put, the city was in position that they owed me money for my trip," said Hawkins.

"I've been consumed on trying to design a house and I completely forgot about it and it got put on a backburner. ... "I'm not proud of forgetting this, but it was an accident," said Hawkins.