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Richmond Hill Coun. Carmine Perrelli provokes the ire of integrity commissioner, again

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 13, 2021

Richmond Hill regional and local councillor Carmine Perrelli has received a formal reprimand for behaviour that violates three subsections of the city's code of conduct.

It comes at a critical time, right before the nomination deadline for the Jan. 24 mayoral byelection. Perrelli has registered as a candidate for the byelection.

At the Dec. 8 council meeting, the majority of councillors accepted a report from the city's integrity commissioner, Charles Harnick, which recommends a reprimand for what the complainant classified as "email and Instagram communications that were false, misleading, and void of context."

In May, then-deputy mayor Perrelli decided to distribute a dubious survey to the public that called into question the propriety of city senior staff receiving a "$30,000 (approx.)" pay increase.

Within the controversial survey at the heart of this matter, Perrelli first stated he feels the raises are "unconscionable" and then went on to say that "however, before taking any action, I wanted (sic) to get your opinion on what steps I should take next."

On Instagram, Perrelli's post was even bolder. It read: "Politicians voting themselves massive pay increases! Top staff giving other top staff huge pays (sic) increases without Council approval!"

The complainant, city manager Mary-Anne Dempster, explained that when approved by council, it was within the authority of staff to give these salary increases.

Dempster indicated that the city manager has always had authority over internal human resources matters. She added that when changing the model, some positions might be affected by the resulting increased responsibility and scope.

According to the integrity commissioner report, under a policy approved by council, an independent consultant conducted job evaluations under the management of the director of human resources. These job evaluations resulted in the pay increases in question.

While it is unknown how many constituents received and read the communications, the integrity commissioner clearly had a problem with the way in which Perrelli sought input from the public on this issue.

Although the majority of the council members voted to reprimand Perrelli, councillors Greg Beros and Tom Muench voted no.

However, council did not choose to impose the harsher penalty option of suspension of remuneration for up to 90 days.

This is the second time this year that Perrelli has had a complaint find its way to the integrity commissioner for an investigation and found himself in breach of code of conduct.

In April, a report from York Region integrity commissioner found Perrelli in contravention of code of conduct after investigating the complaint of Perrelli blocking a Twitter account. But no sanction was recommended on Perrelli.