A solution looking for a problem. That’s how we would describe city council’s move on Tuesday to make changes to how complaints about elected officials are handled.
Presented by three junior councillors (Ward 4 Coun. Pauline Fortin, Ward 5 Coun. Mike Parent and Ward 7 Coun. Natalie Labbée) and one veteran (Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti, who likely should’ve known better), the successful motion will force members of the public who have a complaint about a local elected official to both prove their identity when lodging the complaint and provide an affidavit of evidence supporting their complaint.
It also requires anonymity of a complainant to be extended only in extenuating circumstances (which, as Integrity Commissioner David Boghosian told Sudbury.com prior to the vote is how the system operates anyway, so the provision is ultimately meaningless).
This is a softened version of the original motion, which, had it been successful, would have disallowed anonymity altogether in the Code of Conduct complaints process.
We agree with Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh’s discomfort with the aspect of the motion that would have made the identity of complainants public, a situation with potential to lead to dire consequences. We also agree with McIntosh that city council members have more privilege and power than the average person, and that privilege and power, in the wrong hands, could be used for retribution against a complainant.
Strangely, the motion also calls for city staff to review the city’s complaints process and legislation governing how the integrity commissioner job is performed. We say strangely because we agree with Ward 6 Coun. René Lapierre’s opinion that it is odd for one motion to make changes to legislation while at the same time asking for a review of the same legislation — it’s a bit muddled.
Muddled is actually a good way of describing the motion itself, which we find to be a confusing jumble of legal-sounding terms written in the style of a municipal motion as compiled by someone who has never written such a motion before.
Muddled is also a good way of describing how the councillors behind this motion went about their business. Did they consult their fellow councillors who are multiple-term members of council with no small amount of experience facing complaints? It doesn’t seem so (during the meeting Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh said she received it 15 minutes before the meeting). Did they consult the integrity commissioner himself, who is the resident expert on the legislation itself? No.
In fact, IC David Boghosian himself contacted Coun. Parent and made suggestions on the wording of the motion that the proponents ultimately accepted and which served to bring the motion more in line with how Boghosian does his job anyway. (Aside: An amusing bit of irony.)
Let’s not pretend this motion is something different than what it actually is: An attempt to stifle criticism of city council, and an attempt that, sadly, isn’t isolated.
There’s a broader contingent of city council members who appear unwilling to face criticism, and do not admit wrongdoing or remorse.
Labbée has gone to great lengths to distance herself from last year’s unpopular decision to hike non-union city managers wages. She even went as far as claiming she knew nothing about it, and threw city CAO Ed Archer under the bus as a scapegoat, suggesting that if she were CAO she would have resigned over the issue.
Boghosian’s report on her conduct outlined at least two points in time at which Labbée was made aware of the wage hikes, despite her claims to ignorance.
During this same meeting, Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann faced an integrity commissioner complaint regarding alleged Code of Conduct breaches during an April 8 Flour Mill Community Action Network meeting, which she fought on various fronts.
Landry-Altmann dismissed various parts of Boghosian’s report using such words as “utter nonsense” and “categorically false,” and claimed during a city council meeting that “no one was turned away” from the April 8 meeting. This, despite the fact she kicked a Sudbury.com reporter out of the meeting in question.
Landry-Altmann also made various attempts to “undermine the credibility” of Boghosian’s report, the integrity commissioner wrote, “and indeed, suppress my report altogether, on spurious grounds having nothing to do with the merits of the Complaints against her.”
Meanwhile, despite the Election Compliance Audit Committee and a third-party audit by KPMG concluding that Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc appears to have breached campaign rules, Leduc has maintained his innocence and is suing both the city and the resident who complained about him.
But back to Tuesday’s meeting. While speaking mostly about harm to their reputations, the councillors behind this week’s motion actually tried to couch it in financial terms, arguing that Greater Sudbury receives more complaints than any other council Boghosian works with and that since all complaints must be investigated, including frivolous or vexatious ones, it’s imposing an undue financial burden on taxpayers.
The Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities made a similar argument this week, that forcing municipalities to have a Code of Conduct complaints process is a budgetary hardship, particularly on small municipalities.
There may be an argument there. And there may be an argument that Ontario should have a centralized system for municipal Code of Conduct complaints (because centralizing or amalgamating government services always results in savings and improved efficiency … as citizens of the City of Greater Sudbury well know).
But this isn’t really about finances, is it? How could it be — the costs are so low. Greater Sudbury budgets just $90,000 for the integrity commissioner’s work and in the five years the IC has been in place, the city has never gone over budget.
In fact, municipal clerk Eric Labelle estimated the city spends around $60,000 to $80,000 a year on the IC. This, against the city’s massive budget of $500 million is the equivalent of a cup of coffee. It’s a drop in the bucket.
And if Sudbury is IC Boghosian’s biggest source of complaints work and the city isn’t even spending six figures a year managing those complaints, how much of a financial burden on smaller municipalities is the system, really?
That’s all beside the point anyway, because this motion isn’t really about the cost — it’s about the complaints.
In their statements in support of their motion, the councillors mention the costs, but spend a lot more time talking about their own reputations and, as Parent put it, the “psychological harms” that come from someone complaining about them.
To these councillors, we have to ask: What did you think you were getting into when you ran for office? Each of you put your name in the election ring because you believed you could do a better job than the person who preceded you; elections themselves are a complaints-based process in many ways.
Just because the public picked you in the election doesn’t mean they like you personally and it doesn’t mean you're naturally good at the job to which you were elected. Being in the public eye comes with a lot of benefits: people recognize you and often smile when they see you; many of them are deferential to you because of your position; you get treated just a bit better and with a little more friendliness.
These are nice things about having a public profile. The other side of that coin, of course, is that everybody knows you, which means many people are going to have an opinion about you, your clothes, your hair, your weight … and about the job you’re doing.
These are the slings and arrows of living a public life.
People will believe untrue things about you and have complaints about you, or your conduct, that have no merit.
That is precisely why we have an integrity commissioner. An aspect of that job is, to be sure, investigating the conduct of council members. But part and parcel of that investigative process is separating fact from fiction, merit from frivolity, legitimacy from vexation.
The integrity commissioner’s role is twofold: to ensure councillors play by the rules and to protect councillors from baseless accusations.
That fact, unfortunately, seems to be lost on the four councillors who moved this motion.
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