{"id":49050,"date":"2014-07-14T15:31:22","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T19:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=49050"},"modified":"2014-07-14T16:43:47","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T20:43:47","slug":"lorinc-rethinking-integrity-commissioners-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2014\/07\/14\/lorinc-rethinking-integrity-commissioners-role\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Rethinking the integrity commissioner\u2019s role"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-lorinc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to media reports from last week\u2019s marathon council session, Toronto politicians slapped Giorgio Mammoliti<\/a> with toughest possible penalty for breaching the City\u2019s Code of Conduct \u2014 a three-month salary suspension (worth $26,000) over the matter of the $500-a-ticket fundraiser held last spring to help the shirtless wonder defray his legal bills.<\/p>\n

As the National Post\u2019s headline stated<\/a>, \u201cCouncillor Giorgio Mammoliti has pay docked for three months over $80,000 in gifts from\u00a0lobbyists.\u201d The vote was 37-2.<\/p>\n

But given that integrity commissioner Janet Leiper couldn\u2019t legally compel Mammoliti to refund all those unctuous contributions from his self-interested supporters, it seems to me he actually came out ahead, to the tune of $54,000 \u2014 provided he\u2019s not so stupid as to set fire to that sizeable windfall by pursuing a lawsuit challenging her recommendation and council\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

Message: crime pays!<\/p>\n

Okay, okay. Let\u2019s not use the word “crime.” Let\u2019s say: unethical, integrity-free behaviour pays! \u2014 just as it did in the bad old days of the MFP scandal, when a handful of lobbyists and city officials linked to a corrupt computer leasing deal succeeded in pocketing all sorts of green. (The police never laid charges.)<\/p>\n

During the very same meeting, the penultimate one of this insane term, council spent hours tying itself up in rhetorical knots over Leiper\u2019s recommendation that Mayor Rob Ford apologize in writing<\/a> [PDF] for robo-calling Paul Ainslie\u2019s constituents after the Scarborough councilor voted to support a Scarborough LRT instead of a subway.<\/p>\n

The debate was a kind of reprise. As it happens, the final session of David Miller\u2019s second term in office, held in late August, 2010, featured a heated debate about an alleged code of conduct violation<\/a> by then Ward 2 councillor Ford, who, it transpired, had hit up numerous lobbyists and companies doing business with the city for donations to his football foundation.<\/p>\n

Four years ago, Leiper urged council to vote to ask Ford to return the donations (he refused, and the rest is history). Last week, she merely asked council to instruct him to play nicely with the other children in the playground. After much genuflecting about whether such gestures matter in the political arena, Ford shuffled onto the floor of council, had a short whispered exchange with the city solicitor, and muttered an apology that struck me as both content and contrition-free. Still, Ainslie accepted it, and we moved on.<\/p>\n

The juxtaposition of these two cases is yet another reminder that the City of Toronto\u2019s integrity commissioner system, as laid out by the City of Toronto Act (COTA), is both far more and much less than it should be.<\/p>\n

Less, because there\u2019s no way Mammoliti should have gotten off as easily as he did with that fundraiser. And more, because the commissioner\u2019s de facto role as a referee overseeing council\u2019s political etiquette increasingly strikes me as redundant.<\/p>\n

When the province passed COTA in 2006, several of its key provisions flowed directly from the MFP scandal and the ensuing inquiry by Justice Denise Bellamy. It established four accountability officers (integrity commissioner, lobbyist registrar, auditor-general, ombud) and provided each with legislative powers intended to prevent the sort of corruption \u2013 lobbyists collecting political donations, bureaucrats going on corporate junkets, etc. \u2014 that festered inside City Hall after amalgamation.<\/p>\n

The Code of Conduct emerged<\/a> as the vehicle for encouraging, if not ensuring, reputable, conscientious behaviour. At a more granular level, the Code\u2019s provisions can be separated into two broad categories \u2013 one set of rules governing political conduct (e.g., failing to adhere to council policies); and another, more specific, set of provisions that regulate the way politicians interact with lobbyists, suppliers and others seeking to do business with the city. This latter set of provisions focuses on things like gifts, improper use of influence, and interactions with lobbyists.<\/p>\n

For years, we\u2019ve watched as the integrity commissioner\u2019s office has been used as a vehicle for trying to police the way the Fords transact politics. In theory, the commissioner\u2019s legislated authority should serve as a way of delineating what\u2019s acceptable and what should be subjected to public shaming. In practice, however, the system has failed a crucial stress test, and that, to my mind, raises questions about whether council should even be in the business of regulating how its members play the game of politics.<\/p>\n

Does it matter that a man who is nearly incapable of telling the truth mumbles an apology to another councillor? Has that gesture restored the world\u2019s equilibrium? Is our democracy healthier this week than it was last? Will Ford now turn his back on the practice of using privately-funded robocalls against targeted opponents? No, no, no and, I strongly suspect, no.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, we should all be deeply troubled that COTA doesn\u2019t allow council to go much further in prosecuting politicians who abuse their positions in order to benefit themselves, their friends, or their cronies. Just consider two cases reported by The Globe and Mail showing how the Fords tried to push city officials to deliver financial benefits (tax incentives in the case of Apollo, and an outsourcing deal in the case of R.R. Donnelley) to companies with which Deco Labels has business relationships.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note here that when Leiper recommended that Ford repay the football foundation donations as a penalty for breaching the Code, she got her wrists slapped by a provincial court judge who ruled, during the 2012 conflict of interest case against Ford, that she\u2019d gone beyond her statutory limits when she made that recommendation (something no one, including the city solicitor, noticed at the time). The law, the court said, was clear: the maximum penalty council can impose on one of its members for violating the Code is three months of salary.<\/p>\n

The problem, as this recent Mammoliti case shows, is that you can violate the Code and still come out ahead. It\u2019s true that most politicians aren\u2019t as shameless as he is, so I\u2019m not expecting that Mammoliti\u2019s tactics will become the norm. Still, the bottom line \u2014 $54,000 in the black \u2014 suggests the disincentive is inadequate.<\/p>\n

Even more important is what this relatively modest fine implicitly says about those critical provisions in the Code that seek to prevent politicians from abusing the public\u2019s trust and misusing their own positions of influence. After all, what\u2019s at stake here is nothing less than the city\u2019s credibility and council\u2019s reputation for probity. Surely, such institutional virtues are worth more than $26,000.<\/p>\n

by Erik Parker<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to media reports from last week\u2019s marathon council session, Toronto politicians slapped Giorgio Mammoliti with toughest possible penalty for breaching the City\u2019s Code of Conduct \u2014 a three-month salary suspension (worth $26,000) over the matter of the $500-a-ticket fundraiser held last spring to help the shirtless wonder defray his legal bills. As the NationalContinue reading “LORINC: Rethinking the integrity commissioner\u2019s role”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":49055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Rethinking the integrity commissioner\u2019s role - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2014\/07\/14\/lorinc-rethinking-integrity-commissioners-role\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Rethinking the integrity commissioner\u2019s role - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to media reports from last week\u2019s marathon council session, Toronto politicians slapped Giorgio Mammoliti with toughest possible penalty for breaching the City\u2019s Code of Conduct \u2014 a three-month salary suspension (worth $26,000) over the matter of the $500-a-ticket fundraiser held last spring to help the shirtless wonder defray his legal bills. 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