LTE: City seeks to maintain its image over being open and transparent

Something has very much changed in the city of Cornwall over the past year or so, and it is important for media to be talking about it.

Transparency and accountability are key for any government that is to effectively serve the people it represents.

Actions by city council and administration over the past year or two has moved our local government further away from those key notions of transparency, accountability, and service and instead has shifted it towards an attitude of secrecy, control, and ruling the public rather than serving them.

The latest example of this trend could be found in this past week’s city council meeting where administration presented to council the new media relations and social media policy.

This policy requires that all media requests for information go through the city’s communications manager. This includes any requests for comment from a city employee and councillor. This is being done in order to manage the city’s image rather than ensuring that truthful and accurate information is publicly available.

Earlier this year it was announced that administration, without consulting with council, had contracted the services of an Ottawa-based public relations company to manage the city’s communications, rather than a designated internal employee as has been the norm.

I’ll remind readers here that it is not the job of a public relations firm to ensure that the public has the information it asks for, even if that information is sometimes unflattering. Rather, a public relations company is about hiding anything that might be perceived as “negative” to their clients image.

There are of course other examples of council and administration taking steps to reduce opportunities for public scrutiny.

At the beginning of this council’s term, they began to hold public town meetings where members of the public could come and ask questions, but they’ve since stopped this practice.

This council also became the first in recent memory to hold their annual strategic planning meeting behind closed doors.

This trend of secrecy and avoiding accountability has become a worrying trend for this council that has been especially pronounced since the hiring of the city’s new Chief Administrative Officer, former Ottawa city councillor Mathieu Fleury.

The public should write letters to administration and council telling them they oppose the proposed new media relations and social media policy and consider the response they get back carefully when the next municipal election rolls around in two years.

Nick Seebruch
Cornwall, Ontario