What Happened To Objective City Reports? BENN

When and why did objectivity cease to be a mandatory part of civic studies and reports? Reports from Lansdowne to light rail and myriad in-between.

Many reports are biased because the decision criteria are designed to support the preferred recommendation. Willful selection of value driving assumptions. Willful exclusion of data sets that do not support the preferred result. That sort of biased.

To be fair, studies and reports prepared with a lack of objective analysis have long been a problem. Not just for governments and NGOs, but also for many profit-oriented businesses. Having said that, boards of directors comprised of qualified individuals are far more likely to identify the problem and set staff straight than councils comprised of elected officials and government appointees.

Why?

Because relying on a report that is not prepared in an objective manner can affect the survival of the organization. And the survival of the organization is one of the primary objectives of a governing board. Staff in serious, mature organizations that are found to have prepared skewed analyses and recommendations often have their career trajectories limited. For good reason.

Which takes me to Lansdowne. The opponents of the latest round of Lansdowne renovations are raising the profile of the project, again. They have assembled a petition with some 5,000 signatures demanding a referendum on whether the city should proceed with the $400-million to $500 million project. Perhaps they will be successful. But I doubt it. Why? Because their approach remains the same as the last several iterations. This can be seen in a recent column in The Citizen authored by Capital Councillor Shawn Menard. Just a reiteration of what he doesn’t like.

Pehaps they should try a different approach. Menard should corral the handful of councillors who are opposing Lansdowne to ask staff to reconcile the differences between the staff-prepared report, which presents a rosy future based on a roughly $420 million cost, with those prepared by the city’s auditor general and independent consultants EY.

Both of those reports paint a far more dismal picture. Both of these reports found, independent of each other, that the analysis and report from staff is fraught with unrealistic assumptions. That the report’s decision criteria ignore the concept of a competitive bid. Both of those reports have made it very clear that the staff report was not prepared in an objective manner. Yet no one on council has even dared to take staff to task for the obvious shortcomings of their report. At least not in a public setting.

The question can be posed in a civil manner. It can be crafted in a fashion that requires staff to respond, line-by-line, to the differences in assumptions between those in the staff report and to those in each of the city AG’s and EY’ reports. In essence, to support the assumptions made by staff and refute the criticisms by the two independent reviews. In essence, council should be asking staff to explain, in detail, why there are such diametrically opposing analyses. Council should be asking staff to provide them with sufficient evidence-based analyses to allow council to make an informed decision. In other words, to meet council’s statutory obligations.

At the same time, council needs to consider why a $420 million  to $500 million contract should be sole-sourced. To discuss the reasons in a public forum, notably at a council meeting. To explain to the public, and thus create an “audit trail” of the logic that while the city demands that the supply of coffee creamers is a matter for competitive bids, a half-billion-dollar, plus or minus a hundred million dollars, contract can be awarded without a competitive bid.

In addition to a more rigorously prepared staff report, council needs to consider, in a public setting, whether a couple of high-end, high-density towers are an essential part of the project.

This discussion needs to go beyond the banal air-rights cost-contribution rhetoric that passed for debate a couple of years ago. It needs to examine whether an organization, independent of the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group partners, would waste their time preparing a bid.

Council needs to consider, in a public setting, how removing parkland from an under-served area of the city is consistent with the Official Plan. In particular, the section that says that existing parkland inside the Greenbelt needs to be preserved.

Precious little of the above has been addressed in a fulsome public manner to date. Bits and pieces here and there. The key elements glossed over. You know. The usual piece-meal approach that the city takes when considering tough decisions. Seldom, if ever, a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and shortcomings.

Why is this necessary now? Because the credibility of council depends on it.

The credibility of council is a critical element of our model of government. It matters. And over the course of the last two-and-a-half years, this council has added to the doubts about the credibility of Ottawa City Council that started years ago with prior councils all through self-inflicted injuries.

Which self-inflicted injuries you ask?

• Confederation Line route: Behind closed doors decision to reroute the tunnel to the front of the Rideau Centre, rather than the initial route that passed behind the mall.
• Lansdowne 1.0: Sole-sourced after announcing a competition that was designed to attract international input. Based on what?
• LRT Stage 1: Opening before it was ready when it was known that it was not ready. Based on an incomplete and therefore biased report to council. Add to the mix the related egregious acts of malfeasance that no one on council could be bothered to censure.
• LRT Stage 2 Trillium Line extension: Awarded to a proponent that failed the technical specifications twice. Councillors who asked questions were told they weren’t allowed to know. Weren’t allowed to know when they have a statutory obligation to oversee city decisions. How could staff claim that they had provided a complete and objective report to council?
• Lansdowne 2.0: Sole-sourced again, because Lansdowne 1.0 was such a roaring success that the proponents have acknowledged it was a failure. All based on a report that has been criticized by two independent analyses.
• Sprung Structures: A hundred-plus-million-dollar initiative delegated by council to staff, with all the main decision criteria hidden, not just from the public but also from the council that has the statutory obligation to oversee staff decisions. Mismanaged from Day 1 through to the day the project was ignominiously discarded as not required after all.

The common theme of these self-inflicted injuries? Councillors were relying on reports that were clearly not prepared in an objective manner, relying on reports that were purposefully incomplete and reports missing critical elements that might have generated questions from a competent councillor.

To paraphrase one time Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty when he back-tracked on the location of a couple of natural gas power generators “It is never too late to do the right thing.” The right thing starts with having objectively prepared studies and reports on Lansdowne before council considers whether or not to proceed.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

For You:

It’s So Bad The Rats Are Leaving: PATTON

Democracy In Doubt At City Hall: QUOTABLE

Why Lansdowne Petition Gets No Traction: Prof

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