TORY TIES COST HIM JOB: SUIT
Ex-deputy AG coming after the city
A former deputy auditor general for the City of Ottawa says Mayor Jim Watson blocked his promotion to the AG job because of his ties to the Tories.
In a wrongful termination lawsuit against the city, Raymond Kostuch claims his political affiliation influenced how a hiring panel of council members chose another candidate for the AG position.
Watson, a former Liberal MPP, didn’t like Kostuch’s political affiliations with the Tories, the lawsuit claims.
None of the allegations in the lawsuit has been tested in court.
City solicitor Rick O’Connor said Wednesday the claim hadn’t yet been served on the city and, as is standard practice, the city doesn’t comment on matters before the court.
Watson’s office echoed the city’s position, saying the mayor can’t comment because it’s a court case.
Kostuch’s 37-page lawsuit, filed by employment lawyers at Nelligan O’Brien Payne on June 20, suggests there has been political and bureaucratic drama at city hall when it comes to audit work.
The AG job became open when former watchdog Alain Lalonde’s term ended in January 2014.
In 2013, council selected five members to sit on the AG hiring panel: Watson, who chaired the panel, deputy mayors Steve Desroches and Eli El-Chantiry, audit committee chair Rick Chiarelli and audit committee vice-chair Allan Hubley. Council added the deputy mayor spots from the last time the city struck an AG hiring panel in 2004.
Ken Hughes, the former deputy city treasurer of revenue, won the AG job and his appointment was praised around city hall.
According to Kostuch’s lawsuit, Watson and the two deputy mayors voted for Hughes’s appointment, while Chiarelli and Hubley voted for Kostuch.
The lawsuit doesn’t indicate how Kostuch knows where the votes fell, since the vote wouldn’t have been in an open meeting.
A city news release in October 2013 has Watson quoted as saying Hughes was the “unanimous choice” of the AG hiring panel. Council was also told the panel members were in agreement on Hughes’s selection before council voted unanimously in favour of his appointment.
Kostuch claims he was told in a meeting with Chiarelli, Hubley and Lalonde that he came a close second in the running for the AG job.
According to Kostuch’s account of what was said in the meeting, “Mayor Watson had raised Kostuch’s involvement with the Conservative Party as a reason not to appoint him to the AG position.”
On Wednesday, Chiarelli told the Citizen he couldn’t comment on what happened in a private discussion or during an in-camera decision of the AG hiring panel.
“It would be an offence to comment on that,” Chiarelli said.
Hubley also declined to comment.
The lawsuit goes on: “Kostuch had expressed his position on same-sex marriage when he was a Conservative candidate in the 1999 provincial election. Mayor Watson, a former provincial Liberal cabinet member, openly took the opposite position and expressed his displeasure with Kostuch’s view during the 1999 election.”
Watson “continued to have issues with Kostuch’s political affiliations up until Kostuch’s termination” in 2015, the lawsuit says.
Kostuch was the Progressive Conservative candidate in Ottawa Centre in the 1999 Ontario election. He finished second to Liberal candidate Richard Patten. Kostuch was hired by the City of Ottawa in early 2002.
Watson was the Liberal MPP in Ottawa West-Nepean between 2003 and 2010, during which time he held multiple cabinet posts. He was elected mayor in October 2010.
The political bitterness is only one part of Kostuch’s claim. His lawsuit also describes an acrimonious relationship and history with Hughes, who as AG became Kostuch’s boss in December 2013.
The lawsuit says Kostuch led the 2002 audit of city credit cards in which he found Hughes “inappropriately” used his city credit card to buy a briefcase for himself and to take city staff to lunch. Hughes disagreed with the audit findings, the lawsuit says.
In a 2010 audit of staffing practices, Kostuch found that Hughes allowed a program manager to chair a staffing board that hired her nephew, the lawsuit says. The claim alleges Hughes “followed Kostuch out of the press conference and physically grabbed him, complaining about the audit and the manner in which it had been presented.”
Kostuch says his role in the office slowly eroded after Hughes became AG. No longer was he making presentations to councillors or resolving matters with senior city bureaucrats.
According to the lawsuit, Hughes asked Kostuch to complete demeaning tasks, such as preparing a flow chart explaining how the parking-validation stamp was used in the office.
Kostuch says Hughes told his first staff meeting in the AG’s office that Kostuch’s 2010 audit of the revenue branch (Hughes’s former department) was the “worst audit ever completed.” Hughes apologized to the group at the next staff meeting, the lawsuit says.
There are several allegations in the lawsuit about expenses, days off and family commitments.
Kostuch has an engineering degree and the city paid for his professional dues, but he alleges Hughes declined to reimburse the dues for 2014. Kostuch, who has two sons, one of whom is autistic, claims Hughes made him change his family’s March break plans in 2015 so he could attend the annual audit tabling, costing him $2,700.
Kostuch was terminated on June 22, 2015, even though he says he racked up good performance reviews. It was the day before the office’s annual employee appreciation lunch.
The lawsuit says workplace stress affected Kostuch’s mental health. He’s on long-term disability today.
Hughes is on vacation this week, but in an email exchange with the Citizen on Wednesday, he said he hasn’t seen the lawsuit so it’s difficult to address the allegations.
Hughes wrote to the Citizen: “The representations that are truly from audit reports are a matter of public record and were addressed through the council approved audit reporting process. The recollections of events are those of the individual alone. Any human relations matters are generally addressed through internal processes. I’m sure that you understand that as this matter is part of a court process I am unable to comment further.”
Kostuch’s lawsuit says he wants to be reinstated at the city or receive money for his alleged wrongful dismissal, or additional severance and money for lost employment benefits. The 55-year-old Nepean man wants additional compensation that he says the city failed to include in his severance.
On top of that, he claims the city owes him $100,000 in aggravated “bad faith” damages, $100,000 for harassment, $100,000 for human rights breaches and $200,000 in punitive damages for “harsh, vindictive and reprehensible” conduct.
Kostuch couldn’t be reached for comment by phone, email or through his lawyers.