Yet another conduct code complaint has been filed against a member of Red Deer city council or staff.
This is the third complaint that a member of council or staff has acted inappropriately since January 2021.
A special meeting was held about the latest situation this week — but once again, members of the public are not being told what, or who, the complaint concerns.
Instead, a section of the Protection of Privacy Act was cited that states disclosure would be harmful to personal privacy, would reveal public body confidences, or involve advice from officials.
The special closed-door meeting went beyond its two-hour time limit on Tuesday, but there was no resolution at the end that would necessitate a public vote.
“The code of conduct matter in front of City Council at its special meeting yesterday was not connected to any prior code of conduct matters,” states an email from the City of Red Deer.
“At this time, we do not have any information we can share about the closed meeting of council on Tuesday as it is currently protected under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.”
The first Conduct Code complaint was made in January 2021 about former city Coun. Buck Buchanan’s seeming support for COVID rule-breaking through a social media comment.
An independent SAGE Analytics investigator, who was paid $20,000 by the city to look into the councillor’s actions, found grounds for sanctioning Buchanan. The investigator’s report was accepted by city council and Buchanan was ordered to apologize.
A second conduct code complaint was made against someone who then sat on city council a few months later.
But this accusation, and the person accused of wrong-doing, were never revealed — even though taxpayers spent $107,000 for a consultant’s investigation and report into the matter.
The contents of this second report were never made public because the report and its recommendations were never accepted by city council.
As a result, the Advocate filed a Freedom of Information request on Nov. 9, 2021 to see the report. The request was made on the grounds it’s in the public interest to know what taxpayer money was spent on — and what a publicly elected person did to warrant the complaint.
But what was initially supposed to be a 30-day wait for information has now stretched to more than a year and a half after an objecting “third party” requested the Privacy Commissioner’s office step in to review the Advocate’s request, to potentially stop the information from being shared.
At the end of February, the City of Red Deer received notice from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC), that an inquiry on this file will be proceeding. The estimated timeline is that a decision will be made by Sept. 28 about whether the requested information can be released to the Advocate, and therefore, the public.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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