Formal sharing process is not a priority for city
Penticton council has met in camera just 18 times this year, down from 38 times in 2016
Editor’s note: This is the final article in a five-part series. To view the in-camera reports referenced in the earlier parts, check the online version of this story, which will go live this afternoon at www.pentictonherald.ca.
Creating a formal process to release as much information as possible from in-camera council meetings is not a priority right now for the City of Penticton, according to its chief administrative officer.
Peter Weeber pointed to ongoing work — like the Official Community Plan update, review of the Building Bylaw and an overhaul of the city’s records management system — as more pressing matters for staff.
“I think, yeah, sure, in the bestcase scenario we’d be releasing things on a regular schedule. Are we that organized right now? No. Especially when there’s not something pressing that we feel the public needs to be deeply involved in,” he said.
According to a 2012 report from the B.C. Office of the Ombudsperson, however, it’s in the best interests of both public bodies and the people they serve to release information from closed-door meetings as quickly and completely as possible.
Public bodies should do so, the report states, to “demonstrate their commitment to the principles of transparency and accountability and to receive the benefit of a more informed, engaged and trusting public.”
“It is not only large and wellresourced local governments that have adopted this approach; smaller local governments have done so as well,” the report adds.
The document goes on to set out best practices for dealing with release of information from in-camera meetings. Chief among the recommendations is assigning a staffer to regularly review resolutions and reports from closed meetings with an eye to making them public once any threat of harm from doing so has passed.
Dana Schmidt, the City of Penticton’s corporate officer, said it’s her job to “periodically” review material from closed meetings, but she acknowledged “there isn’t a defined period” for doing so.
Council here met in camera 38 times last year, compared to 28 times for counterparts in Vernon and 35 in Kelowna, according to staff in each community.
Schmidt noted, though, that Penticton council has met behind closed doors only 18 times to date in 2017.
Data varies greatly in larger centres.
Calgary city council met behind closed doors an average of 187 times per year during its most recent term, according to a study prepared by the Manning Foundation, which also found that between 2014 and 2016 Toronto city council met in camera only 18 times and Ottawa just once.
One of the study’s authors said in an email the frequency of in-camera meetings matters just as much as the length of them, and some closed-door sessions dealing with land, labour and legal issues are justified.
“But we should be wary of a council that seems to prefer having discussions and making decisions in private, away from the public eye,” said Peter McCaffery, director of research for the rightwing think-tank.
“Transparency is a fundamental element of our democratic style of government. Accountability to the public isn’t possible unless the public know what their government is doing and why.”
McCaffery also cautioned that although it’s the job of staff to make sure politicians don’t stray into public matters while behind closed doors, it undoubtedly happens anyway.
“We regularly hear reports of councillors concerned that the issues being discussed in camera are not really as sensitive as claimed by other councillors or by city administration, and that ‘legal reasons’ is often used as a general excuse to avoid holding ‘uncomfortable’ discussions in public,” he said.
Weeber, who only started in January, wouldn’t speak to practices of his predecessors, but said he is doing his best to keep council’s closed-door discussions on track.
“We are not allowing things to go in camera that are not allowed in camera,” he said. “I’ll hold that standard as long as I am here.”
Under Weeber’s command, there have been two occasions this year when the nature of in-camera discussions were revealed at subsequent open meetings.
The first was Aug. 15, when appointments to three committees were announced. The second was Sept. 19, when it was revealed council had passed on an offer to sell two properties on Skaha Lake Road that are currently home to the Oxbow RV Resort.
Weeber said the latter issue dealt with the potential sale of sites designated as future parks, and it was therefore in the public interest to disclose it.
“That would be a fundamental shift in the way the city has been working in the past,” he added.
Other matters that were decided in camera, like a $200,000 payout to Trio Marine Group to kill its deal to upgrade Skaha Marina, were later disclosed via press release.
“I can’t fix things fast,” said Weeber, “but we can fix things over time.”