N.S. Auditor Reveals Multiple Conflicts Of Interest Involving Housing Authority Director
HALIFAX – The head of the province’s largest housing authority was tangled in multiple conflicts of interest that saw him enter personal business deals with government contractors and personally benefit from public subsidies, according to a new report from Nova Scotia’s Auditor General.
Kim Adair says the director of the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority was involved in “numerous” conflicts of interest during his time leading the organization, including some he didn’t disclose.
“There was a clear mixing of the director’s responsibilities” between his job and his private business interests, Adair told reporters Tuesday morning. “There was a clear mixing and a clear conflict.”
Adair referred only to the director of the organization and did not name a specific person. However, during the period she investigated, Jamie Vigliarolo was the director of the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority.
In November, the province dissolved the metro authority as part of its plan to amalgamate the province’s regional housing authorities. Before the change, it was the largest in the province and responsible for more than 4,000 public housing units.
Public contracts, private land sales
Adair’s report lays out how Vigliarolo was part of “a series of conflict-of-interest events” involving the owner of a security company hired by the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority.
On August 1 of 2020, the Authority put out a tender for security services at some of its properties. Five days later, Vigliarolo sold some of his private property to the owner of the company which would eventually win the bulk of that security contract.
The auditor did not name the company that received the work. However, Huddle had learnd it was awarded to Dartmouth’s Five-Star Security services.
We reached out to Five Star but didn’t hear back by our publication deadline. We haven’t yet confirmed the identity of the specific “owner” Adair refers to in her report.
Five Star officially won $996,000 worth of work from the Authority on October 8, 2020. Less than a month later, on November 4, Vigliarolo sold a second piece of private property to the “owner” associated with Five Star.
Adair said her team could not find any record of the two property sales being publicly listed.
Vigliarolo and the Five Star owner also, at one point, sought government funding for a full-service affordable housing project on properties they both owned.
Adair says Vigliarolo told the appropriate people of that conflict but said she found “no procedures were put in place to address the conflict.”
More than $100,000 in subsidies
Meanwhile, Vigliarolo was also a private landlord during his time as director of the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority.
According to Adair, the province paid more than $115,000 to Vigliarolo as part of income assistance programs for his tenants at several different properties. Her team found that $99,093 was paid to him from April 2011 to March 2020, and $15,960 during her audit period, from March 2020 to June 2022.
Vigliarolo said he declared the conflict to his superiors and those superiors confirmed his account. However, Adair says her team couldn’t identify that declaration because it was never documented.
“Being a landlord doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a conflict, but, in this case, there were rental subsidies being paid to the director and that’s a conflict,” Adair told reporters.
‘Far-reaching implications for all government departments’
Adair said her office didn’t look into whether criminal charges should be laid. She said that should be left up to the province.
Heather Fairbairn, a communications advisor with Municipal Affairs and Housing, told Huddle in an email “the individual in question is no longer with the government” and that the province is “seeking advice from the Department of Justice regarding next steps.”
“The findings of this most recent report were extremely concerning and that’s why we took immediate actions to address them. We have accepted the OAG’s recommendations, and we have already made a number of changes to strengthen conflict of interest policies and procedures and improve our procurement processes,” Fairbairn wrote.
Adair said her report was meant to deal less with legal consequences and more “speaks to the culture within the housing authority.”
Last June, her office issued another report calling out the lack of government oversight over the province’s housing authorities.
“What we’re seeing today is an example of that very situation,” she said.
Adair’s latest report lays out four recommendations for the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing resulting from her investigation. They include things like better documentation and procedures for handling potential conflicts of interest and adding conflict of interest language into public tenders.
The auditor says the province has already complied with three of those recommendations and has agreed to the fourth.
“If [this report] seems a little different from the reports we normally release, it is,” Adair told reporters.
She noted that the report, and the recommendations it lays out, should have “far-reaching implications for all government departments.”
Adair’s complete report is available here.
Trevor Nichols is Huddle’s editor, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].
This story was last updated on January 17, at 5:10 p.m.