An allegation of conflict of interest levelled against a city councillor over the Kingsway Entertainment District decision continues to make its way through the courts.
Andre Dumais alleges Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann was in a pecuniary (financial) conflict of interest when she voted in June 2017 in favour of building the $100-million arena on the Kingsway, rather than downtown.
Dumais, a vocal supporter of keeping the arena downtown, contends Landry-Altmann was a board member of the Sudbury District Motorsports Association at the time of the vote, and was therefore in a pecuniary conflict of interest.
While not part of the June vote, the Motorsports Association is working on a long-term plan to develop a racing facility adjacent to the Kingsway Entertainment District, where the arena, casino and new hotel are expected to be built by 2020.
In response, Landry-Altmann says she resigned from the association's board in March, months before the vote. And in any event, the Association is a non-profit organization, so there's no pecuniary interest no matter what happens long term.
Since the case first went to court late last year, Landry-Altmann has filed documentation to back up her claim that she had resigned by the time of the vote.
Included is a document from OnCorp, an Ontario company that handles business registration and other technical work for corporations. The document confirms that Landry-Altmann resigned from the association on March 22, 2017.
In his filing, Dumais relied on corporation documents that still had Landry-Altmann listed as a director at the time of the arena vote. But an affidavit by Tim Laderoute, president of the Motorsports Association, says that as a non-profit, they don't update their corporate documents regularly because of the cost.
In fact, Laderoute said it hadn't been updated since it was founded in 2009, and there was only one name on the list Dumais relied on that was still with the Association.
Dumais also filed additional documents: minutes from a city council meeting in January 2014 in which Landry-Altmann declares a conflict of interest before a vote on funding for the Motorsports Association to hire a project manager.
In response, Landry-Altmann said she declared a conflict because she was a member of the board at the time, and it was a decision directly related to the Association.
“Unlike the situation at hand, I was not a director of the Sudbury District Motorsports Association on June 27, 2017,” she said in the documents. “And there was nothing on the agenda that even involved the (Association.)”
Tentative dates have been set later this month and June for the next hearing on the case.
