- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor
A Code of Conduct complaint filed with Owen Sound's Integrity Commissioners last fall by Deputy Mayor Brian O'Leary against Councillor John Tamming has been investigated, and a report will be presented at this evening's council meeting.
It concludes with a recommendation:
"It is recommended that Council for the City of Owen Sound impose the following: That having been found to be in breach of the Code of Conduct, Councillor Tamming is hereby formally reprimanded."
The full 16-page report is available here. We won't attempt to précis it for you but our colleague Denis Langlois at the Owen Sun Times has done a good piece.
As Councillor Tamming's letter published in the Owen Sound Hub features prominently in the report, we have a few comments.
First, an apology for not clearly identifying Mr. Tamming as the author at the top of the letter in both places it appeared on the Hub site. We generally follow the newspaper style of putting the name and municipality of writers of letters to the editor at the end, but in this case we chose to put it at the top, and a little software glitch and human error kept that from being seen on the Letters page.
More importantly, we want our readers to know that the Letters and Opinion pages, and indeed the entirety of the OwenSoundHub.org will continue to be open to anyone who chooses to write to or for us. We do not publish libel or hate speech, nor gratuitous foul language or personal insults. You can decide for yourself if "bully" falls into that.
Over my six years as Editor of this Hub, we have published content written by, or submitted by, every member of the current council. We publish every media release sent to us by the City of Owen Sound, from road closures to surveys. Neither any member of council nor the City itself in any capacity are advertisers in OwenSoundHub.org.
The complaint process of the Integrity Commissioner is about the municipal code of conduct, not a criminal or civil case of defamation or libel. The last report (no longer available online) of Principles Integrity to city council was in April 2019. At that time an unnamed party had made a complaint against Deputy Mayor O'Leary about alleged conflict of interest around his family's shares in Mudtown Station, a local brewery in a City-owned building. Mr. O'Leary was completely vindicated in that case - the Integrity Commissioners stated that there was no conflict of interest - and fellow council members, including Mr. Tamming, spoke in support and defence of Mr. O'Leary and questioned the process.
The Ontario government is currently inviting the public to participate in a 90-day consultation aimed at strengthening municipal codes of conduct, better training and standards for integrity commissioners, etc.
While we too want safe and respectful workplaces and accountability, we hope that the result does not negatively impact transparency and the right to ask questions, or stifle the fair debate of issues.
image: screen shot of Janice Atwood Petkovski, Principles Integrity, from Rogers TV coverage of Owen Sound council, April 2019
