June 2, 2003
To anyone paying attention, the departure of Rita Reynolds from Toronto City Hall is a bad omen. Problem is, very few pay attention to municipal politics. Civic elections regularly tabulate as low as 30 percent, and less, in voter turnout.
That Reynolds, the city’s director of corporate access and privacy, was pink-slipped during the 2003 municipal election campaign, speaks volumes. Councillors, already under public suspicion for the mega-million dollar MFP computer fiasco, are showing no fear of public reprisal at the polls.
Like a beacon in the dark, Rita Reynolds was one city bureaucrat whose integrity was beyond reproach.
Taxpayers may recall that it was Reynolds who stood strong in demanding accountability on council’s $150 million Union Station redevelopment scheme. Those looking to the province for relief from council chicanery will be disappointed, as it was the provincial integrity commissioner who, in a written report, ultimately gave the green light to the Union Pearson Group at the heart of the controversy.
In that report, the lawyer who had shredded documents at the peak of the Union Station scandal, was exonerated.
In an unflagging quest for transparency, Reynolds had responded ‘tout de suite’ on all freedom of information requests coming in to the Twin Towers on the Union Station deal.
In so doing, she had invoked the wrath of senior bureaucrats, like the city’s chief administrator Shirley Hoy, and city clerk Ulli Watkiss. Indeed, Reynolds in hot water for speaking publicly about shredded documents, said months ago that her job was now on the line.
In politically correct terms, the city’s director of corporate access and privacy was charged by her superiors for "not being a team player."
In the most high handed way possible, Watkiss dismissed Reynolds four months to the day after information that the shredding of public documents was disclosed.
Ms. Reynold’s one-woman crusade has been bravely defending the public’s right to know about the disturbing shift in favour of secrecy, and in-camera meetings, at Toronto City Hall, since amalgamation.
"I think the public and city council has to ask what kind of government they want," she said on her way out of the door. "Do they want an open, transparent, accountable government where occasionally the bureaucracy is going to be embarrassed? Or do they want a culture of saving face where nothing is disclosed; where council is not allowed to decide when it has enough information to make a decision; where the control of information to council and the public rests solely with the bureaucracy? That’s what the decision has to be?"
Many frustrated taxpayers now know what council wants, Ms. Reynolds, and you proved it.
Coun. Michael Walker, whose voice was loudest on the way the Union Station deal went down, was reportedly outraged about the Rita Reynolds’s pink slip.
"It just shows you how sick things are here, most particularly with senior management," Walker said. "She was dismissed because she refused to be part of the cover up by senior management around here. It’s senior management that should be fired."
Strong words, Coun. Walker, but actions speak louder than words, particularly when you’re out of a job.
And where are the other councillors, such as Pam McConnell et al, who spoke so loudly when it became known that Reynolds’s job was on the line?
Out on the municipal hustings campaigning for re-election.