Richmond Hill blows past budget for integrity commissioner services in 2019

Services provided by former Integrity Commissioner Deborah Anschell, representing ADR Chambers, cost city more than $64K

Yorkregion.com
January 24, 2020
Sheila Wang

The integrity commissioner services set the City of Richmond Hill back a pretty penny last year.

The city paid $64,582 for the services provided by former Integrity Commissioner Deborah Anschell, representing ADR Chambers in 2019, according to spokesperson Kathleen Graver.

That's almost double the annual budget of $33,000 the city set aside for the service last year.

“The financial control bylaw allows for overages to be covered by savings found elsewhere in the operating budget,” Graver wrote in an email on Jan. 17.

ADR Chambers was appointed in June 2018 under a provincial mandate that requires each municipality to put an integrity commissioner in place to regulate the behaviour of council members.

The city extended the one-year contract with the dispute-resolution group last April to another year, only to be cut short abruptly seven months later in November.

Anschell received 14 code of conduct complaints throughout her tenure in Richmond Hill, which mostly coincided with the first year of the current council.

She managed to complete investigation of nine of the complaints, including the case against Regional Coun. Carmine Perrelli over “unwarranted public humiliation” and the one against Coun. Karen Cilevitz for not informing the rest of council of residents’ meetings.

Richmond Hill paid an annual retainer fee of $12,000 plus a $300-an-hour rate for the former integrity commissioner’s service, according to the city.

It means Anschell put in 175 hours on investigating code of conduct complaints in Richmond Hill last year.

The financial arrangements with the current integrity commissioner Norman Groot, representing the Toronto-based law firm Investigation Counsel P.C., remains unknown.

The Liberal learned from Access and Privacy Officer Aliza Jafri that the city will make a decision on whether to release the records regarding the financial details by March 3, 2020.