Where will Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell rank on next list of highest-paid mayors?

Toronto politics tends to dominate the headlines, especially in southern Ontario. But beyond the circus tents at Toronto City Hall, to borrow a phrase, there are elections looming in cities across the Greater Toronto Area worth watching.

Mississauga will choose a new mayor for the first time in 36 years, with news that octogenarian Mayor Hazel McCallion is not seeking re-election.

But Brampton, often lost in the shadows of larger GTA communities, has an election tale of its own to tell, and from recent accounts it an intriguing one.

The Toronto Star reports that Mayor Susan Fennell is facing questions after quietly requesting her salary be lowered ahead of a provincial audit last year. The move comes after Fennell was found to be the highest-paid mayor in the country.

The issue was to be discussed at a city council meeting on Wednesday, but Fennell was a no-show.

In a statement released that day, Fennell said her husband was admitted to hospital to undergo heart surgery. "As a result, I will be away from City Hall today and throughout the initial stage of John’s recovery," Fennell said.

A second statement later clarified that Fennell was not on a leave from work and would be present at the next council meeting, on April 9.

It's an odd scandal from the outside. One would wish that all mayors ask to be paid less. Alas, there are question of whether the request, reportedly made confidentially to the city's treasurer, was even legal. And according to Coun. John Spovieri, it is unclear whether Fennell could or would ask for the money back at a later date.

“It is a weird evolution, how this all started and where it’s going. And all the trickery that has been played to try to cover up and deceive the public, who are outraged here in Brampton,” Spovieri told Yahoo Canada News in a telephone interview.

“When they found out she was the highest-paid mayor in Canada, there was a huge, huge backlash. Now she is backtracking.”

The controversy stems from a confidential request to the city treasurer to have her salary stopped for November and December of 2013, shortly before a province-mandated audit.

From the outside, the move appeared to be intended to avoid the public embarrassment of being named the country's highest-paid mayor for the second year in a row.

In 2013, she was named the highest-paid mayor in Canada, with a combined salary of $213,727 the previous year – $162,839 from Brampton and $50,888 for her mandatory position on the board of the Region of Peel. Brampton is the ninth-largest city in Canada.

Brampton will hold a municipal election on October 27, and Liberal MPP Linda Jeffrey recent quit her cabinet position with the rumoured intention of running for the city's top job.

Regional councillor John Sanderson has already announced his candidacy, with a focus on ending a culture of entitlement at city hall.

This is not the first time Brampton's mayoral spending has made headlines. Fennell recently earned a Teddy nomination – a shame prize handed out annually by the Canadian Taxpayer Federation.

She was nominated in the category of "Best effort at self-promotion with tax dollars" for spending $186,000 over the past three years in office – including $130,000 on "self-promotion."

Ontario is expected to release its Sunshine List – list of notable public salaries – by the end of the month, which will list Fennell’s Brampton salary minus the $23,000 she has declined. The reduction is likely to knock her down a few pegs on the list of highest-paid mayors. Just in time for election season in Ontario.