If the Mayor’s commitment to open government was timed to start with the first monthly meeting of Council, then excluding\u00a0the public from nearly half of the time allotted for council business sent a message that\u00a0Rothesay’s\u00a0Council\u00a0isn’t quite ready to tackle this issue.<\/p>\n
After\u00a0the public was finally let into the Council meeting, the\u00a0Mayor announced a grand-sounding “Mayor’s Special Committee on Open and Transparent Government”. Clearly the irony of this was lost on the brightly smiling Mayor.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0announcement was remarkably short on detail on how the committee would operate and what its authority and scope were. That is likely because it’s been placed on an exceedingly short leash, limited to answering two questions. First; “What does the public want to know?” Second, “How would they most like to receive the information?”<\/p>\n
If this committee is going to spend an equal amount of time on each question, then it will waste at least half its mandate. If Council doesn’t already have a working answer to the first question then it is very clearly out of touch with constituents and the antics of the past four years.<\/p>\n
As for that first question, the public should have\u00a0access to information that it has a right to. \u00a0So the more relevant\u00a0starting point should have been, “How has the town performed in providing information required by the public?”<\/p>\n
Based on at least one matter currently before the courts, town staff may have a view about right to information that is out of sync with what the law says it should make available<\/p>\n
It isn’t surprising that performance of town staff doesn’t seem to be within the committee’s scope given that the memo outlining the committee’s mandate was probably written by the very staff whose actions are, by coincidence, under review by Justice Glennie this week. That case involves\u00a0a report on a flooding issue that staff had\u00a0refused to release to a homeowner for almost 6 years.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0case was dragged out, including through a year long\u00a0Right to Information Commissioner’s investigation\u00a0after which the Town failed\u00a0to act\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0Commissioner’s recommendation to release\u00a0the report.\u00a0The town’s actions likely gave the home owner no other viable recourse\u00a0except to take the town to court. The report was\u00a0finally released in the midst of the ensuing legal proceedings and after putting the unrepresented homeowners through an epic David and Goliath battle. The Mayor could have pointed to\u00a0this case as ground zero in evaluating the Town’s performance. But of course, she has\u00a0not.<\/p>\n
If the\u00a0Mayor’s Committee were to attend the hearing and initiate a discussion\u00a0with the homeowners involved, they might get a firsthand appreciation of what\u00a0some face when dealing with the Town of Rothesay. They would\u00a0certainly get as much\u00a0insight\u00a0into what the public “wants” and what the courts see as a minimum in the flow of information from Council than from a staged Twitter exchange.\u00a0That’s a pity, as a visit to Justice Glennie’s court on Friday would give the two committee members an insight they won’t receive otherwise.. Perhaps Council’s first policy development exercise deserves a fail if no one bothers to show up\u00a0on Friday other than the Town’s lawyer.<\/p>\n
But I digress… The Mayor did talk about openness and transparency last night. These are two distinctly different issues. “Open government” is about public engagement<\/strong> in the democratic processes of government. It is a two-way, iterative process.\u00a0The objective of transparency is to enable\u00a0accountability not to control spin<\/strong>. Accountability is more likely\u00a0when the public has the knowledge of government operations in sufficient detail to hold them accountable for their decisions.<\/p>\n The two questions and the background memo from the town manager suggest\u00a0to me that the committee doesn’t actually have a mandate to deal with the open government issue. \u00a0Their questions are simply about communication and one way communication at that. The Mayor’s goal appears to be\u00a0more about improving the town’s\u00a0“messaging” than rising to the challenge of open and transparent government.<\/p>\n The memo proposing the “Mayor’s Special Committee” reinforces this as it outlines activities that would be\u00a0the front end of an outbound public relations exercise. This simply isn’t scoped in a way\u00a0that would allow for\u00a0effective\u00a0public policy to be\u00a0developed. I wonder if we’ll eventually\u00a0see a recommendation that entails hiring one of the PR firms suggested during the last Council’s mandate?<\/p>\n The problems Rothesay has stem from a lack of\u00a0public trust and a frustration with a rampant attitude that the public is only entitled to the information the information holder wants them to have. These will not be solved by a committee without a mandate to investigate these underlying causes of\u00a0public angst.\u00a0\u00a0Rothesay’s poor relations with residents are\u00a0much more about values and ethics than they are about creating better spin.<\/p>\n Finally, a last comment, on the\u00a0committee structure. A committee of two with input from a staff person does not foretell a process where multiple points of view and experience are intended to\u00a0enrich the exercise. Councillor Mackay French will find that she will have to push hard not to be kneecapped by\u00a0the limited mandate given to her by Mayor Grant.<\/p>\n I do have confidence that she will\u00a0make best efforts\u00a0in moving this issue forward. But the Councillor\u00a0may find before this Friday that her remit is so constrained that “Openness and Transparency” may be elusive goals. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If the Mayor’s commitment to open government was timed to start with the first monthly meeting of Council, then excluding\u00a0the public from nearly half of the time allotted for council […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onerothesay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/new-council.jpg?fit=2448%2C910&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hcCG-ps","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1578"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1593,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions\/1593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}