The Cult of Secrecy Blossoms at Council

[indent]The Cult of Secrecy flexed its muscle last night at Council. I was denied access to what should be public information - the legal and related costs of repealling the HIA for the Admiral Collingwood development. The majority of Council voted to reject my request for information.

Of course it would. This council - some of this council at least - doesn't want the public to know what it has cost taxpayers by this egregiously bad act. They want to protect themselves from criticism and scrutiny - the vaunted "openness and transparency" proven again to be mere hollow campaign promises. This is the most secretive, most opaque, least accountable council I've dealt with. And last night it was proven again.

I requested:

• Legal costs for anything to do with the project billed to date;
  
• Consultants' costs (Eckler, McLelland, Murdoch) - or if we have not yet been billed please provide me the tenders or estimates of those costs;
  
• Costs for staff time as allocated to this development (including staff time for meetings, OMB hearings, etc. - planning, administrative and any other staff if involved);
  
• Any extraneous or collateral costs associated with this development (any fees, resources used, office supply costs, long distance phone calls, mileage costs, etc.);
  
• An estimate of lost or delayed fees, municipal taxes, BIA fees, development charges, etc. that might have been paid to the town had the project been allowed to go ahead.

I had requested this information from the treasurer via email in July (a request I have made in the past and have received a response to). But before staff could respond this time, on July 12 the Mayor stepped in and intercepted my request. He told me in email to request the information through a staff report. I assume staff was instructed to ignore my request because no information was forthcoming.

At the same time, on July 20, Councillor Edwards requested - and was given financial information about the cost of the round-abouts from staff. He received a lengthy, detailled reply from staff on July 21, with all the costs outlined. At no time was information denied him, nor was he admonished to request such information through a staff report.

So in light of Counc. Edwards' unimpeded request, it was clear this direction to ask for information through an easily blocked process was meant to sideline my own request. It's not about process: it's clearly personal.

It was obvious to me what would happen even before I made my request through a staff report. Council has to vote to approve staff report requests. Of course those who voted to repeal the HIA would vote against having the costs of their actions made public. And I was right - sadly so - the majority voted to keep their dealings secret. No surprises there.

Here' are a few phrases from one of the successful council candidate's recent election campaign:

Quote

Guess who?

In a 5-3 vote, I was denied the right to have [i]public[/bi] information. And through that denial, the public was blocked from getting it. That says a lot about this council.

Of course, not everyone at the table is involved with trying to keep information secret. Deputy Mayor Cooper and Councillor Labelle voted to allow the information to be made public. The rest didn't (Counc. Sandberg declared a conflict). But that's three of us against the rest. We've been humorously likened to the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars, or maybe Dumbledore's Army in the Harry Potter series.

The upshot is that today I will file a Freedom of Information request to get the information. And if that gets denied, I will have to consider taking this to a legal challenge. The public has the RIGHT to know these costs and as a member of the board of directors of this corporation, I have the RIGHT to be told what they are. This Cult of Secrecy cannot continue to hold this information back!

I will make the information public here on my blog when it is given to me.

This council has become a secretive, self-protective body where even its own members can't get public information and have to pry it out of the town through legal means. What a sad, sorry comment that makes on democracy in this town.

If you thought you were really going to get a more open, accountable, transparent council last election - if you thought things would change and become better - I suspect you are now very disappointed and possibly deeply shocked. Do you feel betrayed yet? I know some of you do, because you've told me so.

And we're not even a year into our four-year term. I doubt it will get any better than this. It won't surprise me if it gets a lot worse.[/indent]