Prof calls for greater council transparency

A political science expert says the City of Brandon should be more transparent in relation to closed-door meetings.

The city has held 78 committee of the whole meetings — most of which were closed to the public — since the new council took office in October 2022, according to data obtained by the Sun.

Those meetings aren’t listed publicly, and minutes of the meetings — where notes are taken by staff — aren’t publicly accessible on the city’s website.

University of Winnipeg Prof. Aaron Moore, whose expertise includes municipal politics, said while he believes the city is complying with legislation, people expect more transparency.

“They’re not really adhering to I think what the general public would expect from their government,” Moore said in an interview Thursday.

“The public, when they think about government and government transparency, they expect government to not just do stuff to the point where they’re meeting legislation, but to actively be trying to provide information to the public and make it available to them in accessible ways.”

He said the way Brandon approaches some things is “problematic” from a public perspective.

There is no evidence that the city is doing anything “untowards,” he said, but the lower level of transparency leaves the door open to public accusations or for people to raise concerns.

The committee of the whole consists of all members of council. Its meetings are often used for topics that need to be kept behind closed doors, like staffing or property issues.

Data provided to the Sun by the city’s records official — which was given after a formal request — show the meetings have also been used for items like budget discussions, the Park Community Centre and a transit study.

The city’s bylaw states that council can enter into a closed committee of the whole for six reasons. They include discussions about an employee and their salary or benefits, a matter that is in the preliminary stages, the conduct of legal proceedings, an investigation into an act or bylaw, the security of documents or premises, or the report of the ombudsman.

“I think the big issue Brandon seems to have is that they don’t proactively provide any information. They wait for people to ask,” Moore said.

The minutes of the committee of the whole, he added, are “meeting the bare, minimum requirements.”

The committee of the whole cannot make any decisions until a subsequent regular or special council meeting.

Moore said people also shouldn’t expect every discussion to be made public.

Coun. Bruce Luebke (Ward 6) said he thinks that two of the three topics at an upcoming committee of the whole meeting scheduled for Monday shouldn’t even be on the agenda and should instead be open to the public.

Luebke, who expressed surprise when told the number of committee of the whole meetings held during the current term, said he doesn’t see any benefit in going behind closed doors to discuss certain matters.

“If we discuss this subject publicly, how does that impact our ability to complete this agenda item?” he said. “And so, I do think we maybe need to be a little bit more aware.”

Renee Sigurdson, the city clerk and director of legislative services, said the meetings usually deal with briefing items or operational issues.

The meetings are scheduled whenever they are needed, she said.

They are typically held just before a regular council meeting, usually in the councillors’ meeting room at city hall. The topic of the committee meeting is normally moved to regular council meetings weeks later.

“I think that administration briefings are important to be able to equip council with things,” Sigurdson said after leaving a committee of the whole meeting just before a regular council meeting last month. “They can’t know everything that goes on in the corporation, but enough to have a good standing on what is happening here.”

She said the best decisions are informed ones. Sigurdson, or the deputy city clerk, attends those meetings to make sure council and staff are following regulations or legislation, she said.

“I do my best if it’s in a structured atmosphere, making sure that it’s following the rules,” she said, adding there have been times during the past three years she has paused discussion as it should not happen in the committee, and council has been respectful of that.

In 2022, Moore told the Sun that he believed the city was breaking the Municipal Act by frequently holding informal, off-the-record meetings.

Between Oct. 25, 2018 and April 30, 2022, city council met 206 times, but only about half of those meetings were in the public eye, the Sun reported in May 2022.

Sigurdson, who assumed her role in January 2023, said she doesn’t hold informal meetings.

She said she intends to “bring something more formalized forward, just with more structure,” which would bring more clarity for people.

“I don’t hold informals. I need to have some sort of proper procedure for a meeting structure to clarify the two, and so that I can justify them, so that I can stand behind them,” Sigurdson told the Sun.

Mayor Jeff Fawcett on Friday said the city is following municipal rules and told the Sun that Brandon is “the most transparent” government in Manitoba.

Fawcett also referenced the 2022 Sun article.

“You guys did this to us last election as well. It’s almost — I get the feeling like you want us to be ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ and cover like every discussion we’ve ever had with any person we’ve ever met,” he said.

He added that the city is trying to “do a bit better” when it comes to transparency.

“I think the city’s being very transparent,” Fawcett said.

He said he wished council could sit down more often with city manager Dave Wardrop and not have the Sun ask what the meetings are about.

“Because it’s just for information … as elected officials, to get as good of information as we can so that we can make decisions at the council table, which is the only place we make decisions.”

Coun. Tyson Tame (Ward 10) on Friday said the committee of the whole meetings are helpful for council, as members ask a lot questions in what he called an “education session” that can take a long time.

Asking those questions only during a regular meeting wouldn’t be as beneficial as the current system, he said, because members wouldn’t have time to think over answers and do their own research.

Repeating questions at both meetings, so that the public can hear the answers, might be a better solution, he added.

Len Isleifson, who is running against Fawcett for mayor in the Oct. 28 election, said there are too many closed meetings taking place and that he would increase transparency if he were mayor.

While certain topics need to be confidential, “you need to let the people know that we’re working on their behalf,” Isleifson, a former city councillor and Brandon East MLA, said Friday.

“The councillors need to be held accountable by the electorate, and so does the mayor, and the city manager needs to be held accountable by city council,” he said. “I mean, I think there’s some vast improvement needed in all those areas.”

Isleifson said he’s been hearing from residents for the last year that they don’t know what is happening at city hall.

“It’s like a fortress, it’s all locked down, there’s no communication, so those are things that we have to improve on — we will improve on if I’m in there. We will increase the communication.

“We’re elected officials in there doing a job on behalf of the electorate. And if we’re not communicating to the electorate of what we’re doing, then we’re not doing our job.”

He said he would change the city’s communication strategy and let the public know what council is doing and why it’s doing it, though that can’t mean disclosing confidential information.

Moore said while Brandon is more transparent than in the past, “it’s still not where it really should be” or “anywhere near” the level of transparency a city of Brandon’s size should be operating under.

“There’s still this like little-town mentality that exists,” he said.

“You need to rethink what exactly you are, given the size of your budgets and all of the expectations that are placed on the municipality.”

The Manitoba Municipal Administrators is not in a position to assess or comment on Brandon’s meeting or minute-taking practices, executive director Adrienne Bestland said in a statement Friday.

» alambert@brandonsun.com