COVID-19 disrupted online posting of municipal council expenses in Cape Breton

UPDATE: Not long after this story was published, both Inverness and Victoria counties posted their up-to-date expenses online. MacDonald said Inverness staff are working on updating various pages on the county website.

Three municipalities on Cape Breton Island missed the latest deadlineto post council expenses online as required by law and in at least two cases, staff say the COVID-19 pandemic is partly to blame.

Nova Scotia municipalities are required to post council expenses online within 90 days of the end of a fiscal quarter. That means expenses up to the end of December 2019 should have been posted by March 31.

On Wednesday,John MacKinnon, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality's deputy chief administrative officer, said its numbers were late and the pandemic was to blame.

"COVID hit us in around the time we were getting ready to start the processing of December's expenses and with everything going on, we vacated city hall," he said.

"We had to get upwards of 100 people working from home. The different credit card statements that would be coming in around expenses were here at city hall and the people that were processing them were at home, so it was all of those things combined that gave us a bit of a delay."

Staff are now back at city halland the latest expenses, including to the end of March, were postedonline on Thursday afternoon.

Council expenses are also not up-to-date on the Inverness and Victoria county websites.

Chief administrative officer Leanne MacEachen said changes to Victoria County's website and disruption due to COVID-19 likely played a part in the delay.

The expenses should be available publicly in a week or so and they will include numbers to the end of March, she said.

MacEachen said citizens don't call looking for the information, but the website shows some of the files are downloaded "quite a bit" for viewing by the public.

In Inverness County, CAO Keith MacDonald said it's not clear why council expenses are nearly a year out of date, but he is looking into it.