In heavily forested british col-umbia, we’re all too familiar with the idiom “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” — especially during tinder-dry summers.

So, when most municipal politicians here burst into spontaneous combustion as an angry reaction to Premier Christy Clark’s promise last January for a new municipal auditor general’s office, most taxpayers took that smoke as a signal for fire. If local politicians are complaining about a measure to make local governments more fiscally responsible, what’s wrong?

Clark has kept the promise she’d made during her run for the B.C. Liberal Party leadership by introducing legislation in late November to create the Office of the Auditor General for Local Government. The legislation is now through its first reading and will be finalized in the spring.

However, it seems most British Columbians don’t share local politicians’ concerns over the new law, under the premise that if a specific city hall is doing a good job fiscally, it need not worry.

But as a November report from the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business shows, many city halls here do have to worry. The CFIB’s B.C. Municipal Spending Watch report discloses that operating spending by B.C. municipalities has grown by almost four times the rate of population growth during the past decade. Between 2000 and 2009, the report says, the B.C. population grew by 12%, while municipal operating spending, adjusted for inflation, grew by 46%. In 2009, total municipal operating spending totalled $4.4 billion — $339 million more than in 2008.

Keep in mind that this report focuses only on operating spending, not capital spending. Or, as Shachi Kurl, the CFIB’s director of provincial affairs in B.C., notes: “It seems that the municipal leaders whom we have placed in charge of minding the piggy bank are more interested in taking a sledgehammer to it.”

And the knee-jerk reactions of many municipal politicians have missed the mark because they centre on downloading more responsibilities from senior governments. While that’s true, the report says, funding transfers from senior governments to municipalities in B.C. have more than tripled between 2000-09.

In addition, the report says, B.C. municipalities have more than doubled revenue earned from sales of services such as parking and business licenses.

So, where’s all the money going?

Mostly, it’s being consumed by ever-rising labour costs through salaries that are much higher compared with pay for similar jobs in the private sector and to high staffing levels. And while the need for an outside municipal watchdog definitely exists, the B.C. government has not reduced municipalities’ governing powers in the process.

This new watchdog office makes sense for several reasons. Generally, government auditors draw public attention to overspending, wastefulness and inefficiencies. We also must keep an eye on the growing shortfall of public infrastructure replacement needs in municipalities across the country, which will add greatly to capital-spending pressures.

In fact, there’s never been a better time to unleash spending watchdogs at the local level.  IE