Consequences

Councillor MacEachern has cut , pasted and circulated my last Blog and Comment in the Aurora Citizen to council colleagues "for their interest".

Town staff have also been asked to indicate which councillors and citizen committee members have failed return the copy of the Code forwarded to them for their signatures.

The Code was created following the advice of George Rust D'Eye, the lawyer retained by the Mayor in the wake of the "EMERGENCY" from a supposed "Leak" from a closed meeting

Readers may remember the Mayor refused in public to provide the reason for retaining the services of Mr. Rust D'Eye. The implication was clear however. The lawyer was retained following The Auroran news story that Council had refused to sell land we had for sale, at the appraised value to York Regional Police Department for the location of the new Regional Headquarters. The story was accurate but there was no attribution.

Other than his advice not to attend meetings between himself and council because of conflict of interest regulations and to retain legal counsel, I had no direct conversation with Mr. Rust D'Eye. I ignored his advice of course having full confidence in my own integrity. I was never asked if I leaked the story nor I understand were questions were asked of The Auroran as to how they obtained their information.

Eventually however he did submit a report which he immediately advised could not be made public and submitted a bill in excess of $16,200 .

He had two recommendations for council about to deal with a councillor who refuses to observe the rules of confidentiality. The recommendations eventually saw the light of day after one of them was enacted. The first bit of advice was for council to create an executive committee which could conceivably include every councillor save one.

The second was to create a Code of Conduct which would carry penalties for anyone who failed to abide by it.

One of the penalties would be suspension for three months the remuneration of a councillor who was found to be in breach of the Code.An Integrity Commissioner must be appointed and of course paid a retainer.

It's an interesting concept.. The exercise evolved from the Mayor's outrage that the community did learn of the decision to refuse to sell land which would have meant the location of the Regional Police Headquarters in Aurora. . No evidence of a leak was ever provided. Police plans to re-located to Aurora were apparently widely known. The council in-camera decision was made in early September. The news did not get out until November.

In forty years of municipal service I have never been accused of breaching confidentiality of an in-camera meeting. Nor was I this time .

So now look what we have gone and done. An new and lugubrious and expensive bureaucratic process has been created to to deal with a problem which was never proven.

Following the public announcement that John Roger's was no longer employed by the Town of Aurora an e-mail was circulated to councillors which had been sent by the Mayor to the lawyer who had participated in the process. The Mayor requested advice about how councillors might respond to media enquiries while mindful of the Code of Conduct. No response from the lawyer was ever circulated. But the message was clear. If any councillor gives any information to the media,that will represent a breach of The Code.

Councillor MacEachern's circulation to council colleagues of my last Blog and Comment to The Aurora Citizen is clearly a move towards citing the Code, No doubt the wires are sizzling while the block put their heads together to formulate their next step .

In the twenty-one months of this term, a parade of lawyers have been retained and instructed by the Mayor to come up with a case for wrong doing against myself for daring to be forthright'

It remains to be seen if their latest strategy will be any more effective than the rest.

It's unlikely to cost less.