Mt. A. politics professor Geoff Martin

Mount Allison politics professor Geoff Martin is questioning why the Town of Tantramar is refusing to release an investigator’s report on how Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell violated seven sections of Council’s Code of Conduct.

“Why is the report — the allegations, the responses and the findings — why is that not all public if it’s about something the person did in the former Village of Dorchester this year in connection with municipal assets?” Martin asks.

“I don’t see why that’s even secret.”

Martin, who served on Sackville Town Council from 1998 to 2004, part of that time as deputy mayor, was referring to allegations that Wiggins-Colwell breached the Code of Conduct in her efforts to restore the Shep sandpiper statue in the village square and dispose of surplus tables in Dorchester’s Veterans Community Centre.

Tantramar clerk Donna Beal responded to separate requests for copies of the investigator’s report from Wiggins-Colwell, Warktimes and Dorchester resident Bill Steele with letters stating that the Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (RTIPPA) requires the town to withhold information relating to a personnel or harassment investigation.

Martin says if there is any sensitive information relating to harassment in the report, it could be removed before releasing what it says about Wiggins-Colwell’s performance as a councillor so that voters can judge her actions for themselves.

“This person is accountable to the voters,” he adds. “The voters are the supervisors of the councillor, not the CAO and not the mayor, and how do the supervisors make their judgment about this councillor, if everything is kept secret?”

Martin also points out that councillors are not employees of the town* so this investigation, conducted by Montana Consulting Group of Moncton, was not directly related to internal staffing or personnel issues that should be kept confidential.

*New Brunswick’s Local Governance Act states: 84.1 (1) A member of council is not eligible for appointment as an officer of the local government or for employment with the local government, including an appointment or employment for no remuneration, at any time while the person holds office as a member of council.

Municipal Codes of Conduct

Municipal government is one of Professor Martin’s main areas of academic expertise. He says the province has required municipalities to adopt Codes of Conduct partly to compensate for lengthening the time between elections from three years to four.

“I think the longer you make the term, the less role there is for voters to adjudicate misbehaviour or councillor performance,” he says.

“Until 1977, we had a two-year term, then we had a three-year term until 2004 and now we’ve gone to a four-year term and the longer the term gets, the less the role for voters and the greater the role for administrative law practices like Codes of Conduct and investigations, which are expensive.”

Martin says more frequent elections give voters the chance to reward or punish the councillors who represent them.

“I personally think New Brunswick should go back to a three-year term because that’s really more democratic.”

Village vs. town

Martin says that in the Wiggins-Colwell case, there may have been differences in how things are done in a small village like Dorchester versus the way they’re done in a larger town like Sackville and now, the even larger amalgamated municipality of Tantramar.

“The smallest villages in New Brunswick don’t have very much in the way of staff, they depend a lot on community volunteers and the councillors often are very much ‘hands-on’ in terms of the day-to-day affairs of the municipality.”

In larger places, Martin says that the roles of councillors and staff are more sharply defined and separated.

“There are these old adages of municipal government like, ‘the council steers and the staff rows,'” he says.

“And there’s another adage that comes into play here too, which is, ‘if you want expertise, you appoint people, if you want representation, you elect.'”

Martin says it can be hard for those from small municipalities who are suddenly thrust into larger ones where things are done differently and he wonders how much training on the roles of councillors and staff the councillors received before, as in this case, the Code of Conduct came into play, an outside investigator was hired and a long list of violations were cited at a public council meeting.

“Does it really require a public shaming to get the message across?” he asks.