Both Wellington County council and Mapleton council missed an opportunity to give more than lip service to the concept of transparency in recent decisions.
The county and the township, soon to be followed no doubt by the rest of the councils in Wellington, elected to engage the services of John Maddox of London-based JGM Consulting as their new closed meeting investigator for a two-year term commencing Jan. 1. Norm Gamble, a former municipal administrator from Grey County, has provided services to the county since 2008. He was also investigator for all lower tier municipalities in Wellington except Guelph-Eramosa. Gamble recently announced plans to retire at the end of the year.
Maddox will be paid an annual retainer of $1,000 for the county and $300 for each participating lower tier municipality, which the county has offered to cover. An hourly fee of $100 plus mileage and expenses will be paid by the municipality in which any investigation is being conducted.
The Municipal Act requires municipalities to appoint an investigator to look into any allegations about improper closed meetings, or accept the services of the Ontario Ombudsman’s office.
The ombudsman does not charge municipalities for investigations, but money isn’t the main issue here.
“Transparency” has become a buzzword for municipalities these days and many of them take every opportunity to trumpet how “transparent” they are, even as their ever-more complicated operational structures and reporting systems make following the trail of a local tax dollar increasingly difficult.
And when it comes time to decide how potential complaints about the openness of their meetings will be handled, locally the preference has always been for councils to hire their own investigator rather than accept the free, and demonstrably unbiased, services of the ombudsman’s office.
To be fair, the province should never have allowed this to be an option when crafting the legislation requiring a mechanism for closed meeting investigation. Imagine if, charged with a crime, you were given the choice of being investigated by the OPP, or slipping one of your old lodge brothers a few bucks to look into the matter. Which route would you go?
And make no mistake, most of those offering such services, including both Gamble and Maddox, are former municipal administrators, whose expertise is in knowledge of the Municipal Act, not conducting investigations. Why not turn to an ex-cop or a journalist, if you want a serious investigation?
When Gamble investigated a closed meeting in Mapleton in 2013, current Mayor Neil Driscoll, then a councillor, questioned the thoroughness of the investigation, which consisted only of interviews with then-mayor Bruce Whale and the CAO. No one else on council was interviewed for the report, which ultimately found the meeting in question was conducted appropriately.
This is not to suggest Gamble was spinning his reports to favour the councils he investigated. He seemed to genuinely believe he was covering the bases. It’s more a question of perception, justice being seen to be done, the potential for abuse, that sort of thing.
To be fair to Mapleton councillors, they are relatively new to municipal affairs and collectively have little experience with investigations of this nature, so it’s not surprising there was scant discussion on the matter at that forum. Still, closed meeting investigations may not be everyday occurrences, but two took place during he last term of Mapleton council, so neither are they rare or unusual.
When county council made its decision to go with Maddox in November, then-Warden Chris White suggested having “an appointed officer at the provincial level poking around at the municipal level” was “a road we don’t want to go down.”
Which begs the question: why not?
