Two Halifax residents say the city’s mayor is being investigated for an alleged breach of the municipal code of conduct because of comments he made about the power structure at city hall.
The residents say Andy Fillmore was misleading when he told the CBC earlier this summer that the mayor reports to the chief administrative officer, who he said holds the power.
Halifax resident Peter Linfield, one of the complainants, said he thought Fillmore “doesn’t understand how the structure of his office operates and how council works, or he was intentionally trying to mislead the public in an effort to gain support for that strong-mayor powers.”
“Either way, I was really concerned by that misinformation,” Linfield said in an interview Wednesday. He said he lodged a complaint on July 25.
Fillmore has criticized the city’s “weak” mayoral powers, as the Nova Scotia government considers giving mayors in the province a stronger voice in councils. Currently, all elected councillors in Nova Scotia — including mayors — have a single vote on councils.
Halifax Regional Municipality’s organizational structure says the chief administrative officer reports to regional council, of which the mayor is part. It is the job of the chief officer to communicate the decisions of council to municipal staff.
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The Canadian Press has reviewed emails obtained by Linfield and another complainant — Jillian Banfield — from an independent consultant confirming that their complaints have merit and as a result Fillmore is under investigation.
The consultant with MC Advisory was not immediately available for comment. Fillmore did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment. A spokesperson for the municipality would neither confirm nor deny that the mayor is being investigated, citing privacy.
On Tuesday, the Halifax Examiner reported that Fillmore is being investigated because of code of conduct complaints made against him after a town hall meeting.
Banfield said in an interview Wednesday she thinks the mayor’s claim about the municipal power structure is harmful to the public, especially to those who may not recognize that his statement was untrue.
“As an average citizen, it’s pretty hard to keep track of everything that’s happening at any level of government … So for our elected officials to be really misleading the public about what’s going on and how things work, I think is very problematic,” she said.
The Halifax resident said she has not heard from the consultant beyond the email confirming that the investigation is underway, and is unsure if she’ll be contacted for questioning.
The code of conduct framework on the Halifax Regional Municipality Charter says a council member subject of a complaint must have the opportunity to review and respond to the investigator’s report. The report must be presented to council within six months. Council may grant an investigator additional time to complete the report in “exceptional circumstances.”
Tom Urbaniak, a political scientist and professor at Cape Breton University, said that while the mayor’s statement about the organizational structure was false, he expects it “would require more than simply establishing that the mayor spoke inaccurately” for an investigator to determine he breached the code of conduct.
“The investigator’s research will likely focus on context and intent, and the mayor’s own level of knowledge of municipal governance, and whether or not the statement was part of a larger effort to cast false aspersions on other municipal officials or promote misinformation or deception,” Urbaniak said in an email.
After the report and the response to it are delivered to council, it is up to councillors — excluding the member subject of the complaint — to determine if the code of conduct was breached, and decide what sanctions, if any, should be imposed.
The professor said that while it will fall to council to make the ultimate decision, the report from the third-party investigator “will almost certainly carry considerable weight” as council decides what repercussions are appropriate.
The conduct regulations list 13 possible sanctions. They range from removing a council member from municipal committees or boards for up to six months, a $1,000 fine per breach of the code, or issuing the member a “letter of formal reprimand or warning.”
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