An item now before city council again shows how councillors protect themselves and use their built-in advantage, buttressed by tax dollars, to insulate their positions against attack or scrutiny.
Citizen LeRoy St. Germain took Councillor Sandra Bussin to court, alleging she failed to comply with rules governing campaign financing in the 2006 municipal elections. We don't know if the charges would've stuck because Bussin's lawyer argued the citizen missed the deadline to seek an audit of her expenses and the judge agreed. Still, Bussin's legal bill is $7,308. She wants the taxpayer to pay it.
Now, on one level, this seems reasonable. Any person with an axe to grind can take legal action against a councillor that costs thousands of dollars.
But on further review, a different picture emerges.
The city's legal department reviewed this and other cases and clearly concluded it was illegal for city council to cover such costs. For one, the matter occurred while Bussin was a candidate, not as a councillor. To cover Bussin in such a circumstance is to cover every other candidate, whether citizen or incumbent councillor, from vexatious or baseless complaints.
City legal also rejected a plan to establish a legal defence fund for councillors. So the executive committee, led by the mayor, did an end-run.
Council has an indemnification policy. The policy is funded from a general account. All the politicians have to do to get a legal bill covered is to claim a councillor faces exceptional circumstances. Armed with that self-designed loophole, executive committee tapped the fund.
What's exceptional about Bussin's case? Oh, the citizen waited too long to complain against her. As such, the way ally Councillor Howard Moscoe sees it, the action of the citizen is somehow "vexatious" or "baseless" and demands the taxpayer pay her legal costs.
It's inevitable council will back the executive committee. It's in the councillors' own interests. Bussin is the council speaker, akin to chair of council proceedings, the one who can sideline a perfectly good initiative by ruling it out of order and have her ruling backed by the mayor's allies, she being one.
Besides, there is precedent. Earlier this year Councillor Maria Augimeri had her $6,381 legal bill paid for, despite howls of protest from council's integrity commissioner.
In Augimeri's case, Integrity Commissioner David Mullan ruled she had been "irresponsible and reckless" in alleging another councillor, Peter Li Preti, was under "active police investigation." Li Preti, the Ward 8 incumbent, lost a close election race to Anthony Perruzza, a former assistant to Augimeri.
"Members of council need to be protected from frivolous and vexatious legal actions," Mayor David Miller said when the issue came up at executive committee. That's the leader's pronouncement. You can expect the others to fall in line.
The integrity commissioner, hired to be council's conscience, gives a clear indictment of a councillor's behaviour and calls for the councillor to issue a written apology. And city council moves to provide succour and strength to the offending councillor.
City lawyers say they can't recommend the city pay the legal bill for a councillor because it is illegal to do so. Not to worry, there's more than one way to bilk the taxpayer.
Now, are these the guys and gals who should be assisting the big and discredited spenders on the Catholic school board? Rather, they should be kept far apart.
Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
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