Comment
Lawyer up
County Council needs a lawyer. That was the advice suggested last week by a reader steeped in the risks and hazards of governance. The files are too big. Too complex. Too fraught with risk for Council simply to “trust” staff.
Trust in staff is the crutch municipal council members lean on as they wade through massive spending files they are unwilling or unable to comprehend. $200 million waterworks. $25 million annually into roads. $100 million for a new long-term care home. Millions more for affordable housing. Sprinkle in a few lawsuits.
The numbers are staggering. The files complicated. The risks are potentially ruinous. According to this governance expert, Council is in a bad spot, inasmuch as it only hears arguments made by its staff—or municipally contracted legal, economic and financial advisors.
Council does not hear from independent experts or independent counsel. It only hears from advisors contracted by Shire Hall. According to this expert, that shield won’t protect individual council members if/when these files go sour. Or a provincial supervisor is appointed to administer its affairs.
Many councillors reason that ‘we-approvedx- because-staff-recommended-x’ will indemnify them against personal risk as a municipal representative. And it will. To an extent. The trust shield will fend off most liability, particularly on more minor, mundane, everyday matters. But when the files get bigger, more tendentious, and more expensive, the shield gets thinner—until it disappears.
This is because Council is required to ask questions. And to keep asking until they get plausible answers (not just one that agrees with their preference). Especially when such plans imply outsized risk.
This is the requirement of any governing body. Understanding recommendations. Probing the reliability of the underlying premise and assumptions. Asking pointed questions. And waiting for satisfactory answers. But the stakes—and the risks— rise with the price tag.
Sadly Council doesn’t do much of this. Deference to staff isn’t a fair characterization of all council members, of course, but enough are enraptured sufficiently to ensure that negative voices are marginalized. Procedural rules help keep such voices on the edge.
Councillor Roy Pennell struggles to make a persuasive argument—more often combative than clear-spoken. More often focused on small ball than the big picture. So, it is easy for his colleagues to dismiss the Ameliasburgh councillor. Yet, Pennell understands his job and has a keen sense for when Council is getting in over its head.
Regarding the development of a new longterm care home in Picton, Pennell notes that the municipality runs a deficit on each of the 84 beds it provides at H.J. McFarland Memorial Home. He repeatedly asks why the municipality intends to expand the money-losing venture to 160 beds. It’s a good question. But it doesn’t get answered.
Councillor Pennell understands that spending hundreds of millions of dollars on waterworks in Wellington and Picton will impact all County residents—beyond those on municipal water. It will limit Shire Hall’s ability to borrow and impact the cost of borrowing. How many projects will be postponed, or repairs delayed as a result of the County’s capital being tied up in the infrastructure for Wellington and Picton? Pennell has questions. But gets few answers.
The County’s governing council has a much bigger and thornier problem, however. It oversees a waterworks utility set to spend $200 million because its staff have told them Wellington is expanding to 14,500 people, Picton to 32,600 folks. The sheer fantasy of such projections should have elicited much more scrutiny. More questions. But it didn’t, as the chair of the audit committee acknowledged recently.
Staff assured council that development charges would be paid upfront—that this would offset the debt-carrying costs. Yet, there was no requirement for developers to do so. Nor any deadline. Unsurprisingly, no developer has yet paid up.
The critical governance problem is this: just three of the 14 folks making these spending decisions receive a water bill. Their financial interest is not aligned with the customers of this utility. Yet, they are making massive spending decisions with no stake in the outcome. This is unacceptable. It is intolerable.
Passive governance won’t cut it when residents conclude Shire Hall isn’t working in their best interests. Council has a statutory obligation to maintain the financial integrity of the municipality. This has been explained to them. Claiming ‘staff made me do it’ won’t protect it.
course, Council is allowed to make bad decisions. It is not permitted, however, to do so without asking questions that might have averted the disastrous decision.
Council should get a lawyer.
Another quote:
“Section 223.13 of the Act authorizes a municipal council to appoint an Ombudsman, who reports to council and whose function is to investigate in an independent manner any decision or recommendation made, or acted on, or omitted in the course of the administration of the municipality.”
However: this would require Council to appoint an Ombudsman/person.
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Our council did, however, appoint an Integrity Commissioner. You see, the downside is, yet again, “who reports to council”. Indeed, you could go to the Ontario Ombudsman instead. I did look into this, and it appears to me that both the Integrity Commissioner and the Ontario Ombudsman have limited powers in what they can actually do to Council when they misbehave.
What would lawyers say, one wonders?
https://www.weirfoulds.com/things-that-can-happen-to-a-municipal-city-councillor
Quoting from the article:
“It is also important to recognize that each member is there by reason of having been elected by a constituency to represent the electors and serve the public interest. ”
Another quote:
“Section 223.13 of the Act authorizes a municipal council to appoint an Ombudsman, who reports to council and whose function is to investigate in an independent manner any decision or recommendation made, or acted on, or omitted in the course of the administration of the municipality.”
However: this would require Council to appoint an Ombudsman/person.
Seems unlikely that this Council would do that. They seem content with the way things are going, and taxpayers / residents / local media are not making any fuss.
Can this change? Only if:
1) taxpayers / residents exert pressure on their Councillors by expressing their concerns, and
2) media publicizes the concerns, as well as Council’s continuing to ignore the concerns; and
3) Council members act, other than the 5 members who consistently are trying to rein in the spending.
What’s the probability of that? Seems low.
Nowhere in the Municipal Act does it say that developers’ and outside parties’ overrides the interests of taxpayers and residents who elected Council.
But that’s exactly what is happening, and has been happening for some time now.
An Ombudsman/person would be able to do an objective review to confirm or deny this.