Fallout from ‘whackjobs’ drives wacky rules for trustees

Code of conduct ‘can be used to exact political revenge,’ opponent warns

There was never a pressing need for a code of conduct for trustees at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.

They’re adults. Can they not accept the word “whackjob” in the spirit it was intended?

In any case, there is certainly no pressing need for the code of conduct approved at the committee level on Tuesday. Politicians are unherded cats. See Ford, Duffy, MacLaren, Blackburn, and then some. It’s the price of democracy.

This code pretty much had me nuts at hello.

“5. Trustees of the Board shall discharge their duties loyally, faithfully, impartially and in a manner that will inspire public confidence in the abilities and integrity of the Board.”

Why impartially? Is a trustee supposed to be free of bias? What about the election platform they ran on? Does this not make them partial to certain issues they’d like to pursue?

No one is impartial about everything. So stop pretending. Onward we read.

“8. Trustees shall ensure that their comments are issue-based and not personal, demeaning or disparaging with regard to Board staff or fellow Board members.”

The code has no business dictating the breadth of trustee comments and restricting them to certain motives. And, by the way, what if the issue IS the other trustee or the chair? And does this exclude positive comments about other trustees? This is the kind of hopeless debate these codes encourage.

“28. (partial) When individual Trustees express their opinions in public, they must make it clear that they are not speaking on behalf of the Board.”

Says who? In what other field of legislated life is an elected official asked to constantly remind listeners “Heh, just me talking here!” It’s unnecessary, offensive and an affront to free speech.

The code, too, desires to cover behaviour on and off the job.

“16. No Trustee shall engage in conduct during meetings of the Board or committees of the Board, and at all other times that would discredit or compromise the integrity of the Board.”

Is it really the board’s business how trustees behave in their private time?

Well, I suppose it was all inevitable.

There is just a certain kind of mind out there, especially in education, that runs into a problem and wants to respond with rules, instead of a one-time solution.

Trustee Donna Blackburn certainly accelerated the creation of the code when, in January, she told Citizen columnist David Reevely that some fellow trustees were “whackjobs” because of their stance on a fee hike for before- and after-school programs.

She soon apologized, but the fuse was lit. How would the board respond? Well, first with a warning from the chair, and now, essentially a legal framework on behaviour.

A good chunk of the code — it goes on for 10 pages — deals with enforcement. A conduct complaint must be made in writing. With any luck, it can be dealt with informally by the chair or committee head. The penalty could be fairly minor, like a warning or a suggested apology.

There is, however, a formal inquiry process, to be conducted by the chair, vice-chair or an outside consultant. It has its own steps, with time deadlines, but here is the important part: It could lead to a trustee’s being removed from board and committee meetings for up to six months.

Is it even legal, one wonders, to forbid an elected trustee from voting at board meetings?

Blackburn, not surprisingly, spoke against it.

“The notion of the code of conduct came up last term,” she said Wednesday, “and I argued then that these codes aren’t necessary and they are simply tools that can be used to exact political revenge.”

She sits, for instance, on no standing board committees, which she believes is a form of punishment. She also believes that barring a trustee from meetings for six months — “that’s scary” — is too harsh.

“What possible thing could a trustee do that isn’t covered by other legislation, that would disenfranchise them from representing their constituents?”

Blackburn tried to insert a clause that would permit trustees to express their own political views. After all, have trustee jobs not been used as a launch pad to higher office, lo these many years? The suggestion was defeated.

“In my personal opinion, this board is largely dysfunctional. Am I going to get in trouble for saying that? Am I allowed to say that? I don’t know.”

That, indeed, is the worrisome part: When speech is coded, is it still free?