Could Munter Create An Ethical City Hall? GRAY

Alex Munter as city manager.

An interesting concept.

By all accounts, Munter has done a bang-up job as head at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. He has fought for the good cause that is CHEO. But fighting for a good cause is easy because the angels are on your side. Carrying out the will of 25 councillors, some of whom have Lucifer throwing in the bullpen for them, is a whole new ballgame.

Could Munter threaten to resign, or resign, when he was told to do things that simply were not right? Say ramming through $1 billion of e-buses but only giving the public a few hours to sign up to address transit commission on a vital issue of public policy. Furthermore, that salary of $300,000 is pretty hard to abandon.

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After amalgamation in 2001, former city manager Steve Kanellakos was one of the finest public servants your agent had ever seen when he was a municipal senior executive. Outstanding people skills. Understood that the new city should be open, caring and inclusive. He’d pick up the phone or stop in a hallway and chat when Citizen Gray needed information … which is really all reporters want from people. Toward the end of his time as city manager, media relations took days to get back to me and to say that Kanellakos wouldn’t be addressing the issue.

In that and on other issues which are very well-known, he lost his way.

I knew he was struggling as city manager when he sent a message through a councillor after he took an action that wasn’t very palatable. “Tell Ken that sometimes you have to do what you are told.” Could Munter say no to that today? The Munter I knew as Kanata councillor could. Has he been compromised over the years?

I remember teaching a very young Alex Munter how to use the arcane computer system in the Citizen newsroom. Then he taught me lessons, unknowingly, as councillor. When I was trying to keep a fellow reporter from resigning when a senior editor outed a councillor in a story she wrote, Munter simply said: “What’s wrong with being gay?” Hmm. What IS wrong about being openly gay? Nothing.

Munter is brave. He was openly gay in school which had to be a tough one. He was openly gay when he became a public figure. Each day at city hall, his quiet competence was a lesson to the straight community, the gay community and everyone in-between. Sexuality doesn’t matter. Good governance matters.

For me, the most shocking thing is that the young man in the Citizen newsroom is now 55 years old. How did that happen? And how has he changed?

Could Munter do the city manager post? God, yes. But is the massive job of cleaning up city hall too big for one man? The light-rail fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg.

The city hall Munter knew under former mayor Bob Chiarelli was open, caring and inclusive. In the many years since, it has been corrupted. It is closed, uncaring and exclusive. It lies. It does things that are undemocratic. It is arrogant and incompetent.

In short, it is a complete and utter mess.

The biggest task that Munter would face would be change a disgusting culture that has festered since the Bob Chiarelli years.

Is changing the culture of city hall and the civic public service too big a job for one man? Probably but if anyone could do it, it would be Munter. But, if after years of being a senior administrator, is his heart still in the right place? That he hasn’t compromised so many times that he has lost his way. But Munter would start the job as mightily respected. Would he be when he finished?

Were Munter to pattern himself in the post after someone, it would be former regional CAO Merv Beckstead who was one of the best public servants at all levels of government in this city. Some said he was the best but how do you measure that? The Nightmare Nightlife Inaction Committee is baffled trying to measure a unit of fun.

As a reporter, Beckstead was a dream. He would apologize if it took him two hours to return your phone call. Look, I was just happy he returned the call at all. And he always had a hokey joke of the day. You knew you were is trouble if you didn’t get a joke. Or if he humourously suggested we take a trip down to Trail Road landfill and he’d leave me there, never to be found again. But he was joking … at least I hope he was joking. Had he done it, I probably had it coming. No court in the land would convict him.

But Beckstead was more than nice. He was a serious, industrious and brilliant administrator. He and Bob Chiarelli guided Ottawa through the most dangerous crisis here in modern times … the 1998 ice storm … quietly, confidently and competently.

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The problem Munter would face is how long could he stay in the job before being told to do something that was dead ethically wrong. That happens far too often on Laurier Avenue today. I’d hope he’d resign and tell the public why.

Is Munter still the right-thinking young man I knew or has life and power compromised that man out of existence?

If he is still that young man, he would do very well as city manager but the task of changing the culture of city hall would be monumental.

Sadly maybe too big for Alex Munter or anyone else.

Bulldog editor Ken Gray has been a journalist at five major Canadian newspapers over a career that has spanned four decades.

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