Dark places

We are cavefish. This strange creature lives mostly in dark caves and underground lakes where the ability to see offers no advantage. As a result, the cavefish have lost, through many generations, the ability to see. It is blind. Vestigial eyes are covered with scales. It can only exist in the dark.

Your municipal Council met for seven hours last Tuesday. Only one of those hours was spent in open session. The remaining six hours were convened behind closed doors. It has become a habit. Scales are beginning to form over our eyes.

As this Council increasingly struggles to find common ground, it relies more and more on closed-door meetings to conduct the business of local government. It’s a problem.

Other levels of government rarely go behind closed doors. Only in matters of national security or extreme sensitivity will the full House of Commons close its doors to the public and the media. Same for the provincial legislature. Indeed, we could find no public record of Queen’s Park ever going into closed session in recent decades. (Both the federal and provincial governments use closed sessions, however, for committee deliberations.)

Even at the municipal level, when Council ushers the public and the media out of its chambers to meet in closed session, it is almost always a choice. Council is rarely required to go into closed session. In only two circumstances is a closed session mandatory: a) when council is considering a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, or b) when considering an ongoing investigation by the Ontario Ombudsman. These are exceedingly rare circumstances.

In every other case Council chooses darkness. Your council chooses dark a lot. And as we saw last week, it seems to like it there. It is comfortable behind closed doors.

Last week, in a closed session, Council agreed to sell a parcel of land from the industrial park in Picton. The successful bidder, it seems, intends to build a medical services facility on the lot.

Beyond these thin slivers of fact, we, the public—the folks who own the land—know little about this transaction.

So many questions: What was the final sale price? Was there more than one bid? What assurances did Council get that the purchaser would use the land as intended? Who sets the conditions? What are the rules? Where are the safeguards? Or is it just making it up as it goes along?

The message from Council is clear: Trust us. Nothing to see here. Look away.

From Shire Hall: “Council may authorize the sale of land for less or greater than the valuation or CAO’s determination of sale price, if in the opinion of Council, it is in the best interest of the municipality or otherwise fair and reasonable.”

The ‘opinion of Council’ is doing a lot of work here.

If there is no requirement of Council to accept the highest offer—or another prescribed standard—when selling public assets, how do we know the trade-offs were fair or reasonable? When the entire transaction occurs behind closed doors, how are we to judge?

It is a terrible precedent. It sets up an intolerable minefield for staff who must navigate future asset sales. Clear rules and procedures must be established to safeguard the public’s interest.

But the darkness.

This term of Council likes to consider itself superior to previous terms, flattering itself as the enlightened folk tasked with fixing the mistakes of past Councils. It is a common refrain. (It’s not my experience, but they are entitled to their view.) But past Councils always had one or two members who demanded to know why they were going into closed session. Was it necessary? Or was it just easier?

Once behind closed doors, these members would continue to press their colleagues, demanding to know whether it was still necessary to be out of public view—or just convenient? These members could see the perils of a comfortable hideaway.

Those Council members understood the risk and exposure of doing municipal business behind closed doors. They understood that it eroded the public’s trust in the institution.

Mayor Steve Ferguson wrote last week that he is ‘committed to representing the community with integrity, transparency and resolve”. It’s hard to square his commitment when so much municipal business is done behind closed doors.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca