I’ve written about Cape Town
Stadium often, including using it as a case study in my Finance 101 lessons.
Weekend Argus, June 12, published the difficulty I had obtaining the stadium’s actual expenses from the
city.
On May 31 mayco member for events Garreth Bloor, who said
it is available, sent me doctored and incomplete figures, ‘Plan 2015/2016’, purporting
to be the complete ones. Between then
and today I have, a number of times, requested answers to the information
I seek, and future plans for the stadium.
Yesterday and today the city’s chief financial
officer, Kevin Jacoby, replied (see below).
He shouldn’t mind me reprinting it because it’s in public interest and I
informed the city I was investigating the stadium for an opinion article.
“Dear Mr Johnson, I am responsible for the stadium's accounting,
financial and asset management and strategic planning. As an employee of a
responsive administration, I am prepared to
point you to information that is in the public domain. A very good source is
the city’s annual report. (He refers me to the city's website for information.)
The City is working extremely hard on the vision for stadium
sustainability and to make this a viable asset for all our residents, the
stadium remains a strategic priority for the City and is maintained
accordingly.
My staff and I are extremely busy with our core functions and
cannot drop everything to attend to your questions and tight deadlines. In
addition to this, in the instance, the information you require is not simply
available.
Lastly note that the qualifications of staff are not information
that we will make available to the public.”
Jacoby mentions the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), that they
are busy with ‘core’ duties, and the information is ‘not simply available’. Needless to say I replied rejecting his response in toto.
First, I believe
there is no legislation or principle – MFMA, MSA, etc – that
empowers the city to refuse (I was once contracted to the auditor-general on
municipal audits). His refusal is thus
illegal.
Second, I asked for the information over a six week period, sufficient
time to provide it.
Third, Bloor told me the
information is available – they sent me part of it and told me they have to
have inter-departmental briefings before replying to my original list of questions.
If the financial information is really not available, how are they – Jacoby
himself who claims to be micro-managing the stadium’s financial, operations and
strategic management – running a R4.4 billion ‘strategic’ asset – by magic; by
crooked accounting? If so, we have a right to be very worried, so should the
Auditior-General.
Significantly, the city has also not replied to my questions about the
business plan ‘model 5’ option they are pressing ahead with – they applied for
and received zoning approval to commercialise the stadium and Green Point Park
precinct: restaurants, bars, entertainment places, a hotel and/or shops and/or
sports institute, and parking garage.
Because these are significant capital projects – with major financial
implications for ratepayers – that includes the sale and/or lease of valuable
of city property, it falls under the MFMA chapter 4: budgets: particularly
section 19: capital budgets, s22 and 23: publication and (public) consultation of
annual budgets, and s 33: contracts having future budgetary implications.
Section 33 is important. Knowledgeable
external sources believe the business plan ‘model 5’ is all but a done deal,
being finalised behind closed doors. But
Jacoby says the information about how our money will be spent is not available? (Finance 101 Lesson 5: you can’t spend your
way out of debt. Lesson 6: transparency in
financial reporting is key (also an Ethics lesson).
Today Jacoby replied that his staff shall no longer deal with me. He was silent about the legislation that authorises him not to give me the information (there is none). (I shall not respond to his promotion of access to information red herring.)
I told him that was fine, because I did not need it.
I shall soon publish a review of the stadium and an assessment of the annual costs. It's a shocker.
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