Doesn’t sound like better governance

Proposals to cut committee meetings and ignore rural areas are misguided

Fewer committee meetings. Cancellation of travelling public sessions on rural issues. A potential increase in secret gifts to elected officials.

These are all recommendations our freshly sworn-in council plans to consider at its inaugural meeting Wednesday, and they are all measures that could decrease the accountability and transparency of our municipal government.

The first order of business for any new Ottawa council is to discuss a review of governance, or the way council operates. Nothing could sound drier, and indeed, the bulk of the 126-page report (plus 163 pages of appendices) can be considered housekeeping. So it’s easy to dismiss the review as workaday council business. But there are a number of concerning items — not necessarily related — that require more scrutiny.

Let’s start with committee meetings.

There is apparently so little for our community and protective services (CPS), transit, and environment committees to do that council is considering that they meet just eight times a year. Together, these three committees oversee $1.25 billion in operating expenses, with hundreds of millions of dollars more in capital expenditures. While the environment has slightly less to cover than other committees, especially as it passes multi-year budgets setting water and sewer rates, transit and CPS oversee significant municipal services, from the operation of OC Transpo to firefighting and paramedic duties, social services, childcare and housing.

It’s hard to imagine why there should be less work for these committees in the next four years than there was in the previous term or why fewer issues should arise that require councillors’ attention. You’d think that transit, in particular, would have its hands full considering the bus shemozzle we can expect as the LRT nears completion. And yet, transit will meet only eight times a year, instead of the 15 it averaged per year in the previous term.

Reducing the number of meetings also means there are fewer opportunities for members of the public to formally address their elected officials. As Mayor Jim Watson likes to say, the “heavy lifting” of council work is done at the committee level, but with only eight of those planned for three key committees, there won’t be many opportunities for the public to participate in that heavy lifting.

Less formal access to council- lors is also a concern for another recommendation: ending the travelling Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee (ARAC). Since amalgamation, the city has held some of its meetings in the rural wards in the evenings. One problem, however, is that depending on where in our vast rural area the meeting is held, it could take some residents from one side of town longer to attend a meeting in the community than one at city hall.

That’s a valid concern, but the travelling ARAC meeting served two valuable purposes: It was a sign of goodwill to rural residents who can sometimes feel marginalized in our huge amalgamated city, and it took place in the evening so working folks could actually attend.

Councillors shouldn’t be looking for ways to keep members of the public away, but opportunities to bring them into the decision-making process. To that end, councillors should demand that at least some committee meetings — all committees, not just ARAC — be held in the evenings. Sure, nighttime meetings will be a hassle to staff, but holding them outside of business hours will make them more accessible to more people. It’s difficult to hold our politicians to account if we have so few chances to see them in action.

Another challenge to accountability is a lack of transparency. And proposed changes to the gift registry will do nothing but reduce the transparency of councillors’ actions.

When councillors approved a gift registry for elected officials last year, they agreed to set the disclosure limit at $30. They could still accept gifts of a higher value, they’d just have to disclose them on a public registry once a quarter.

Suddenly, councillors are clamouring that the disclosure threshold of $30 is too low because it captures many token gifts that our elected officials receive as part of doing their jobs. So what? It takes minutes to register a gift, so it hardly seems like a major burden on councillors’ staff. In fact, most councillors didn’t disclose any gifts so far this year. (Coun. Rick Chiarelli had four if you count events, which is actually a different policy. One of Chiarelli’s gifts was a $50 Chapters card for speaking to a men’s group from a church in his own community. According to the registry, it was not donated.)

Perhaps the small number of gifts registered in the first half of 2014 stems from the fact that councillors simply didn’t receive anything. Or perhaps councillors refused items they weren’t comfortable having made public. Either way, the gift registry appears to be working the way it’s supposed to, so why change it?

If the recommendation is approved, a councillor could theoretically accept an expensive dinner or a day at the golf course — anything worth up to $150 — and never have to tell a soul. That’s not the goal of the gift registry.

So fewer opportunities to engage with councillors, and less insight on what they’re taking as gifts. This doesn’t sound like better governance.