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You can go watch trustees at Ottawa’s English public school board debate a code of conduct they’ll use to discipline each other, but if you want to know in advance what they’ll talk about, you have to ask.
The board posted a notice that its “ad-hoc working committee” on the code, partly aimed at dissident Barrhaven trustee Donna Blackburn, is meeting Wednesday afternoon. But the committee has no agenda, and no draft of the proposal it’ll consider.
This is not a deliberate attempt to hide anything, said Michèle Giroux, the board’s executive officer of corporate services.
“It’s not our practice to post ad-hoc committee meetings on the agenda. It’s not that they aren’t open,” she said, it’s just that they’re usually of negligible interest outside the board office. This committee has no power except as a talking shop. It doesn’t have enough members even to take formal votes — it just gives periodic advice to the board staff working up the code.
But because this committee’s of unusual interest to some people, Giroux said (that is, because Blackburn and other trustees, including chair Shirley Seward, are at war), she made the call to post the fact that the group is meeting.
Having done that, the board staff also made the call to not post the committee’s agenda or the latest draft of the code of conduct it’ll consider, she said. They had those, and sent them to me when I asked.
“There was no intent in trying to withhold it, but we also weren’t sure that we wanted to start a practice (of releasing things like that),” Giroux said. Sometimes working committees meet frequently or on short notice.
Fair enough. But the result in this case is awkward. Here’s a meeting about how the people who run an $850-million public institution behave, and you can go watch it, but you can’t know just what they’re going to talk about.
The details of the code matter because there’s a decent chance it’ll be used this term.
Blackburn’s not a perfect champion for open dissent. In one interview (with me) that got the board’s attention, she called some fellow trustees “f—–g whackjobs” in a disagreement over funding an extended-hours program. This is not politics at its best.
But codes of conduct for elected officials are tricky, especially when they go beyond basic corporate ethics. “We wish you wouldn’t say that” and “We’re going to punish you for saying that” are very different things.
Imagine how badly rules about politeness could be abused. Just rejecting a staff recommendation could be seen as disrespectful, depending on the circumstances. And what if it’s really bad work? If a trustee really thinks a policy proposal is lazy or self-serving, shouldn’t he or she be able to say so?
The first stage of discipline under the Ottawa board’s proposed code is an informal meeting between the impugned trustee and the chair of the board. The next step is a formal review, possibly led by an outside investigator, also “conducted in private.”
Formal sanctions have to be voted on publicly. But even that doesn’t have to mean openness.
A trustee in the Trillium Lakelands board west of Peterborough quit last year after her fellow trustees used their code of conduct to bar her from all committee meetings for the whole term. Karen Round, a former chair, could still show up to full board meetings but not to the ones where the real work happens.
What had Round done? It’s a secret. The meeting where she committed her offence was itself in camera.
When she resigned because she couldn’t represent her constituents, the board decided to skip a byelection and appointed a replacement, who’ll serve almost a whole term. Kawartha Lakes voters got a representative they didn’t choose and nobody has to defend it.
Another trustee, in northern Ontario’s Rainbow district, found himself excluded from his board’s committees after repeatedly talking about board business in public. This wasn’t a code-of-conduct matter (they just didn’t vote to put him on any of the committees on which he wanted to serve after he was re-elected in 2014). Rainbow board trustees didn’t like Larry Killens, his constituents re-elected him, and the other trustees cut him off at the knees.
Ottawa trustees are giving themselves a dangerous tool. They should be doing everything possible to quell doubts about how they’ll use it.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
The board posted a notice that its “ad-hoc working committee” on the code, partly aimed at dissident Barrhaven trustee Donna Blackburn, is meeting Wednesday afternoon. But the committee has no agenda, and no draft of the proposal it’ll consider.
This is not a deliberate attempt to hide anything, said Michèle Giroux, the board’s executive officer of corporate services.
“It’s not our practice to post ad-hoc committee meetings on the agenda. It’s not that they aren’t open,” she said, it’s just that they’re usually of negligible interest outside the board office. This committee has no power except as a talking shop. It doesn’t have enough members even to take formal votes — it just gives periodic advice to the board staff working up the code.
But because this committee’s of unusual interest to some people, Giroux said (that is, because Blackburn and other trustees, including chair Shirley Seward, are at war), she made the call to post the fact that the group is meeting.
Having done that, the board staff also made the call to not post the committee’s agenda or the latest draft of the code of conduct it’ll consider, she said. They had those, and sent them to me when I asked.
“There was no intent in trying to withhold it, but we also weren’t sure that we wanted to start a practice (of releasing things like that),” Giroux said. Sometimes working committees meet frequently or on short notice.
Fair enough. But the result in this case is awkward. Here’s a meeting about how the people who run an $850-million public institution behave, and you can go watch it, but you can’t know just what they’re going to talk about.
The details of the code matter because there’s a decent chance it’ll be used this term.
Blackburn’s not a perfect champion for open dissent. In one interview (with me) that got the board’s attention, she called some fellow trustees “f—–g whackjobs” in a disagreement over funding an extended-hours program. This is not politics at its best.
But codes of conduct for elected officials are tricky, especially when they go beyond basic corporate ethics. “We wish you wouldn’t say that” and “We’re going to punish you for saying that” are very different things.
Imagine how badly rules about politeness could be abused. Just rejecting a staff recommendation could be seen as disrespectful, depending on the circumstances. And what if it’s really bad work? If a trustee really thinks a policy proposal is lazy or self-serving, shouldn’t he or she be able to say so?
The first stage of discipline under the Ottawa board’s proposed code is an informal meeting between the impugned trustee and the chair of the board. The next step is a formal review, possibly led by an outside investigator, also “conducted in private.”
Formal sanctions have to be voted on publicly. But even that doesn’t have to mean openness.
A trustee in the Trillium Lakelands board west of Peterborough quit last year after her fellow trustees used their code of conduct to bar her from all committee meetings for the whole term. Karen Round, a former chair, could still show up to full board meetings but not to the ones where the real work happens.
What had Round done? It’s a secret. The meeting where she committed her offence was itself in camera.
When she resigned because she couldn’t represent her constituents, the board decided to skip a byelection and appointed a replacement, who’ll serve almost a whole term. Kawartha Lakes voters got a representative they didn’t choose and nobody has to defend it.
Another trustee, in northern Ontario’s Rainbow district, found himself excluded from his board’s committees after repeatedly talking about board business in public. This wasn’t a code-of-conduct matter (they just didn’t vote to put him on any of the committees on which he wanted to serve after he was re-elected in 2014). Rainbow board trustees didn’t like Larry Killens, his constituents re-elected him, and the other trustees cut him off at the knees.
Ottawa trustees are giving themselves a dangerous tool. They should be doing everything possible to quell doubts about how they’ll use it.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
