What are councillors doing behind closed doors?

BY TRACEY DUGUAY

Nearly half the discussions or decisions made by city council took place out of the public eye.

In a one-year period, ending at last week’s meeting, the 12 ward councillors and mayor spent around 41 percent of their time “in-camera,” meaning they met behind closed doors.

Only the decisions resulting in a motion or bylaw became public domain; the rest was for the ears of the elected representatives only.

Council logged about 96 hours of meeting time in total, with 40 hours of it spent in-camera. This doesn’t include finance, priorities, or planning committee meetings, or any other city-related advisory boards, roundtables, etc.

Starting in January, the province’s watchdog is offering to investigate complaints by taxpayers’ concerned about a lack of openness and transparency in their municipalities.

“The purpose of the legislation is to foster an environment of openness and transparency,” said Ontario Ombudsman André Marin in a news release in October.

“If municipal politicians try to make decisions in secret, the public can now hold them to account. If their municipality hasn’t appointed its own investigator, people can turn to the Ombudsman of Ontario to investigate their complaint.”

Sudbury’s city council voted in November to let the ombudsman office handle local concerns, rather than appoint its own investigator or hire the services of one offered through the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO).

There are exceptions to the new legislation, namely provisions in the Municipal Act that allow closed-door meetings for matters relating to personal, personnel, legal, or property issues.

However, these are broad provisions, without clear guidelines. The onus is on municipal administrators to comply not only with the strict letter of the law, but also the spirit of it.

“We’ve heard lots of cases across Ontario of city council abusing the rules that allow them to hold closed-door meetings,” said Duff Conacher, co-ordinator of Democracy Watch.

Greater Sudbury follows every requirement of the municipal act. The time allocated for in-camera meetings is recorded on the agenda and later in the published minutes of the meeting.

Also included in the agenda is a brief explanation of what they will be discussing; for example, “Labour, personnel and litigation” or “Two personnel matters, four disposition/acquisition matters.”

No other details are given.

After reiterating the general reason for the in-camera session, any resolutions or bylaws emanating from it are read into the record at the public portion of the council meeting.

Throughout the year, the discussions involved (topics are grouped for simplification): 14 legal, 21 personnel, 18 property/land and two freedom of information and protection of privacy-related issues. Only 15 resolutions or bylaws resulted from the 40 hours of in camera sessions.

It’s much easier to debate the in-camera legitimacy of an issue that becomes part of the public record. Any shred of transparency is eliminated when it comes to the conversations that never leave the room.

“I would recommend that those concerned about secrecy at any municipality should simply file a complaint (to the ombudsman), in every single case,” Conacher said. “Because those meetings are secret, you will always be on a kind of fishing trip to find out whether a meeting was justified or not.”

Brian Searle, municipal adviser for the districts of Sudbury and Manitoulin, Municipal Affairs and Housing, said he believes city council has used the in-camera provisions “appropriately” over the years.

Given the city’s large labour force, he said, it’s understandable council would have to spend many hours behind closed doors.

“The difficulties municipalities face is the need to balance the public’s right to know against individuals rights to privacy and their right to have their matter considered by the council before it goes public,” Searle said.

Conancher agreed, to an extent. When it comes to a city employee, there needs to be privacy when hearing the issue, he said, but not if council decides to censure a person.

“It’s ridiculous to deny the public’s right to know when someone has broken the rules. I’m not talking about allegations of breaking the rules. I’m talking about a finding of someone breaking the rules,” he said.

“If it’s to make a final decision on disciplining someone, then no, you can’t go behind closed doors. We should be able to watch councillors decide if they’re going to penalize a city employee. That’s very revealing of a councillor’s attitude towards wrong doing.”

He added the closed-door meetings could be used to protect council from public criticism for allowing a situation to develop in the first place.

In other cities, council members vote on whether issues should be discussed behind closed door, said Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor.

Craitor, a former municipal councillor, will be re-introducing the Transparency in Public Matters Act in the Ontario legislature in the new year.

The private member’s bill had received first reading prior to the provincial election. But in keeping with government policy, the bill was lost when the election was called.

As a city councillor, Craitor recalled times when the conversation strayed in closed-door meetings, crossing the boundaries of the municipal act.

“You either stayed there and listened or left if you didn’t think it was right.”

And other times, especially for new councillors, there wasn’t enough experience to “know or understand” if an issue should be off the record, he said.

The MPP believes there should be some “preamble” or “reasonable explanation” of what is being discussed at in-camera sessions in order to facilitate transparency.

“This is an education process for the public when it comes to closed-door meetings for council.”

While Searle believes city council has acted in “good faith,” he said any Greater Sudbury resident who thinks otherwise should take the ombudsman up on his offer.

“I would hope the meeting investigator, after the first investigation, would make some recommendations to address those issues and make further complaints of the same nature unnecessary.”

Conancher said the “decade old culture” of secrecy at the municipal council level will result in the ombudsman’s office getting “flooded” with complaints.

“The way to get a council to change its culture, and reduce the number of secret meetings, is to hold them to account. If they know you are going to file a complaint every time and somebody is going to be looking, especially somebody who they don’t control, eventually their practice will change,” he said.

“If they get caught in something that is questionable, well then, (Marin’s) ears will be pricked up and he’ll be watching that particular city council even closer.”