A moment Brampton can finally be proud of
With council’s vote to punish Mayor Susan Fennell, accountability arrives in Brampton.

thestar.com
Nov. 14, 2014
By Edward Keenan

A weird feature of proceedings at Brampton city council is that when the politicians need to meet privately to discuss confidential legal issues, they leave the chamber instead of having the public leave. The citizens who have come to see their local government at work stay in the gallery, waiting for the public meeting to resume.

So after the special meeting on Wednesday convened at 1 p.m., it heard a quick submission from outgoing mayor Susan Fennell’s lawyer, and then council left the room. The public sat in the chamber staring at the empty seats for about two hours.

During that time - while the councillors were deciding whether to even debate imposing a penalty on Fennell after an expense scandal that had dominated an entire council term and defined an election - the anxious feeling in the room was that this lame-duck council was likely to lame out.

The new mayor and council will take office next month. People talked about how various outgoing councillors just wanted to get this whole thing over with. About how Fennell’s lawyer, who had in the past threatened legal action if a penalty was imposed on her, had made enough points in his speech about due process to give the politicians cover for inaction.

One woman talked about how, whatever technical niceties you wanted to put on it, the everyday people of Brampton could not accept a mayor needing both a private car lease that cost $1,400 a month and a 24-hour on-call limousine service.

This had all been subject to an audit by Deloitte. Then formed the subject of an integrity commissioner’s report. Then, because of threatened legal action by Fennell, it was referred to an outside appeal arbitrator, who reduced the amount Fennell owed.

It all got stunningly complicated, and exposed problems in the interpretation of rules and accounting processes. But voters expressed their disgust in the recent election, which saw Fennell’s 14-year term as mayor and 26-year political career on this council end with a lowly 12 per cent support at the polls.

Wednesday was the last chance for this outgoing council, who had lived and wrestled with this scandal for so long, to impose its own justice for code-of-conduct violations. To impose penalties, such as docked wages, that only city council can impose.

Each time a staffer came to the empty floor of council to announce another progress report - telling people the private session would last another half hour, then another hour or more - she was greeted with impatient questioning. The suspicion among many of those assembled, waiting for the public meeting to resume, was that the politicians would refuse to deal with this. That they were finding an excuse, back there, in private, to make this issue the newly elected council’s problem, to be dealt with after Mayor Fennell had already been paid her severance and returned her chain of office. Which might mean it would never be dealt with at all.

When council members returned, finally, to their seats - for some it was the last time they’d ever sit in those seats, and address this chamber - Councillor Gael Miles outlined the rationale for why they might choose to punt. She suggested that the threat of judicial review from Fennell and her lawyer could wind up costing the city a lot of money. And she said the people of Brampton wanted “closure,” and could get it if council just voted to impose no penalty and be done with it.

But the councillors did not do that.

Their integrity commissioner said he stood by his findings on the matter, that Fennell had “knowingly” breached city policy. And council acted on his findings, voting 7-3 to impose the maximum penalty allowed by law. They docked Fennell 90 days’ pay, and demanded she repay the $144,150 in fees that had been paid for the limo service.

She can avoid the latter penalty if she, at long last, provides evidence that the service was used only for official purposes related to her job. Until and unless she does, the total she owes will be withheld from her severance package.

Council didn’t let the threat of legal action dissuade them from exercising their own legal responsibility to demand accountability, or impose it.

Accountability at last, after four years or more of scandal, delivered by the voters at the ballot box and by the outgoing council at city hall.

More than one councillor on Wednesday said this whole affair had brought shame on the city of Brampton. But in its very last meeting, this council voted to avoid shameful dodging of its responsibility. It delivered, finally, a moment of which Brampton can be proud.