ROTHENBURGER – How the handling of the McCorkell suspension was botched

I’M STILL PERPLEXED about a few things surrounding the Byron McCorkell saga.

Last evening’s announcement by councillors that they had, by a vote of 8-0, re-instated McCorkell to his job would seem to draw an end to this latest City Hall drama but it doesn’t extinguish questions about how it happened the way it did.

As previously explained here and in other media, Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson had authority under the Community Charter to suspend McCorkell. The mayor’s plan was to put his decision in front of council at its next regular meeting on April 9 but councillors decided not to wait that long.

Mike O’Reilly, the deputy mayor for March, claimed the Charter provisions around the mayor’s authority to suspend an administrator are for emergency situations only. As I pointed out to him, the Charter doesn’t say that. It doesn’t use the word “emergency” at all.

O’Reilly acknowledged this, saying it was his interpretation of the intention of the Charter clauses allowing the mayor to do what he did.

I also wondered whether calling a special meeting, especially one without the mayor, was a legitimate insertion into the process so briefly outlined by the Charter. I asked the Union of B.C. Municipalities as well as the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and they weren’t able to answer.

So, obviously, nobody’s going to successfully challenge that part of the process.

But surely to God it could have been done better. The mayor says he wasn’t surprised at the outcome, and since it was so predictable, one wonders why he took it on. “I’ll just continue to do what I was elected to do.”

Aside from that, though, based on past events and the mood of the eight councillors, it should have been obvious they weren’t about to wait until April 9 to hear from the mayor.

So, Hamer-Jackson could easily have waited until after the Easter long weekend to put his suspension into effect (he had Coun. Margot Middleton with him in the room when he gave McCorkell the news), waited for the outraged councillors to call a special meeting, and made sure he was available for it. Then he could at least have provided a rationale for the suspension.

As it is, he refused to change his travel plans, which involve a trip to Las Vegas to watch his son play in a professional lacrosse league game. You might agree with him that family comes first. Or you might believe his civic obligations should have been paramount in this instance.

Doesn’t matter. It could have been avoided.

Councillors are, by no means, without blame. They could have waited for Hamer-Jackson to return. He’s back on Easter Monday. The special meeting could have been held Tuesday. That would have been a wait of one extra working day.

Just as concerning is the news release the councillors issued on Wednesday, beginning with its headline: “Councillors and City Do Not Support Mayor’s Suspension of Acting CAO, Byron McCorkell.”

What does the reference to City mean? Who is the City, exactly, as separate from the councillors? Does it mean all of administration? Did they all sign off on it? Do they think they have a right to get involved in what is strictly the purview of elected members of council? Or did whoever wrote the release simply toss “City” into it for effect? The news release included no media contact information for any staff spokespersons, only for O’Reilly.

Maybe that’s a minor point but the next one isn’t. When municipal councils call a closed meeting, they’re obligated to do so in an open session and to cite the section of the Charter that allows them to do so. In this case, a labour matter.

They aren’t supposed to publicly state the specific situation that will be discussed behind closed doors, and they certainly aren’t supposed to pre-determine the outcome. Yet the Wednesday news release, starting with the headline, was very clear about what the topic was and what the outcome of the vote would be.

The decision, in other words, was made before councillors ever entered the meeting. O’Reilly told me he was keeping an open mind but, seriously? This sort of thing goes against all the rules of procedure and it’s made worse by the apparent blessing of City administration.

As with past such news releases, this one doesn’t appear to have been posted on the City’s website, where all releases are supposed to go. They didn’t even send a copy to the mayor; only to media.

And, by the way, that same news release said the mayor was also in possible violation of privacy legislation, without backing it up with anything other than alluding to the mayor supposedly, possibly, having shared information with a member of the public.

It has the appearance of picking and choosing what’s shared publicly and what’s not, of a double standard for the application of privacy concerns.

Councillors did what they so often do. They teamed up for politics. Even if they insisted on pushing ahead with the meeting in the mayor’s absence, they could have, should have, simply given public notice of it and cited the appropriate legislation that allows it.

Frankly, the way they did it was amateurish.

As I said in yesterday’s editorial, nothing good has come of this. It will be business as usual at City Hall, but with more bad feelings than ever.

Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.