Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti will seek the nomination to run for the Ontario Progressive Conservative party in Brampton.Mammoliti, an outspoken and frequently controversial politician who counts few friends on council after holding elected office for a quarter century, will try to make the jump back to Queen’s Park after he was first elected as an NDP MPP in the old Yorkview. Mammoliti became a North York councillor in 1995 and was elected to the amalgamated city every election since.At city hall, Mammoliti had been an ally of former mayor Rob Ford during a chaotic term and an enemy of Mayor John Tory. He has sat in the coveted council chamber chair directly next to that of the mayor for eight years, causing a scene this term when it was suggested deputy mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong might want to sit next to Tory. Mammoliti became one of Ford’s lone defenders in 2013 following the crack cocaine scandal, even as council voted to strip Ford of his powers.His career has been characterized by controversy.As an MPP, Mammoliti billed taxpayers more than $14,000 for nearly 50,000 kilometres in mileage for travelling to and from Queen’s Park and within his riding, 2012 expense reports revealed.At the time Richard Brennan, then writing for the Windsor Star, reported that at 29 cents a kilometre — and assuming Mammoliti drove at an average 40 km/h — the then-MPP would have been driving nearly three-and-half-hours every day of the year.As a councillor, Mammoliti has often been in trouble with the city watchdog monitoring council conduct and has been frequently missing from meetings.In 2013, the CBC revealed Mammoliti and another councillor, David Shiner, were getting rent breaks on apartments owned by developers that do business with the city. Mammoliti called the story inaccurate. Neither councillor faced penalties.In 2014, the councillor was docked 90 days’ pay after then-integrity commissioner Janet Leiper found he had improperly accepted ...
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