After today’s council meeting, myself, Metro reporter Kristen Lipscomb and Chronicle-Herald reorter Michael Lightstone grilled mayor Peter Kelly on the city’s continued secrecy in relation to the sewage plant failure.
Council had just received a report from the Halifax Water Commission stating that a preliminary report explaining the failure was ready, and would be presented to council June 30, but only in a secret meeting not open to the public or reporters. During our questioning, Kelly admitted that he read the report yesterday, but would not disclose what it reports.
After our interview with Kelly, I interviewed councillor Sue Uteck, who said that she too was being left in the dark on the report. As she sees it, there is no legal justification for Kelly to withhold the report from her.
Listen to our interview with Kelly below.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2009.
The fact that there is going to be a “secret” about this is even, uh, worse. I mean the sewage itself is far from secret…
I didn’t get a chance to listen to the audio yet, but I can think of two justifiable reasons for keeping the report confidential:
1. If the report contains information that can give certain stakeholders an idea of the kind of legal action the city might be considering against them, which might put the city at a weaker legal advantage by the time they get around to litigation.
2. If the report names one or more companies specifically for being the possible negligent party responsible for the mess. Once the media/public get a hold of that name, it will be all over the news, which would deliver a huge blow to this company’s reputation, and would almost inevitably draw legal action from them against the city, especially if they have grounds to dispute the report’s findings. If their case against the city is successful, our tax dollars will pay the price of our impatience.
In both reasons, the potential financial loss to tax payers from putting the city in a vulnerable legal position outweighs the benefits of early disclosure of this report.
I’m dying to know what the report says, but I’m willing to wait a couple more weeks.
So, issmat– are you suggesting that the city lie in court? That they keep back information they have? Not present the full truth?
huh?
You mean if the city decides to pursue legal action against a certain company or another? Ofcourse they’ll have to use the findings of the report at court to make their case. Why would they lie?
All I’m saying is that if they need to check and double-check before starting to publicly point fingers, then I believe that’s a wise thing to do.
However, don’t mistake my comment as an endorsement of how the city handles freedom of information. I absolutely believe that city hall (and NS government in general) is plagued by a culture of secrecy and sometimes go out of their way to make sure that the public doesn’t get access to information that we are entitled to see.
It was the wrong glue…. mystery solved….
I am still waiting to see the Commonwealth Games Bid information or are these two reports related?
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He does not have the name of the lawyers??????
They will protect the tax payers???? A lil late for that aint it Petey????
Yanno it is bad when they are trying to be secretive about something that hangs in the air smelling…… almost like ignoring the pink elephant in the city hall…..
Its sounds like they were quite negligent in the evolution and logistics of this project and think it is okay to just deal with it legally now…..reminds me of the attitudes of snowplough drivers….they destroy property year after year and do not give a damn why…because the spring crew will fix it up if you call them 10 times……what is wrong with this mentality…..
Do it right the first time!!!!!
The only reason for secrecy that makes “sense” is that the city is trying to hide its own screw-ups from the court.
Absolutely Tim but we own this mess as well…how many times are we going to allow govt to keep peeing on our leg and give us free paper umbrellas….so to speak….
We need to stop being so passive about the screw ups and demand public accountability….ethical people and practice strive to be transparent first and foremost.
Can we ask Kelly to take a lie detector test while we are at it ????
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If the majority of tax payers and he is so about the tax payers…votes for him to take one he should……being he is paid by them he is accountable to them…..responsible government….remember Joe Howe…. or was everyone asleep in grade 10 History class!!!