TORONTO COUNCILLOR Rob Ford, the current front-runner in the race to become Hogtown’s next mayor, caused quite a stir the other day when he alleged the city council had acted corruptly during some in camera sessions.

Mayor David Miller, who is not seeking re-election, challenged his allegations as unsupported by evidence. “If there’s a single piece of evidence or even a hint of something that Councillor Ford thinks is improper,” he should take it to the city’s auditor general and integrity commissioner, the mayor told reporters. “And if there is a problem, I want to know about it. I want to run a clean city hall. That’s why we have all the integrity officials there.”

Councillor Ford had been quoted in the local media as saying that the recent award of an untendered 20-year contract to Boardwalk Pub operator Tuggs Inc. “stinks to high heaven.”

Referring specifically to closeddoors discussions, he said that during the in camera meetings, “there’s more corruption and skullduggery going on in there than I’ve ever seen in my life.”

In response to Mayor Miller’s criticism, he released a statement on his website challenging the mayor to release documents from the closeddoor meetings. “I think it was corruption, Mayor Miller doesn’t, so let’s make all the information public and let the taxpayers decide for themselves,” he said.

Interestingly, his allegations came days after Ontario’s ombudsman lashed out at one of the province’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) as having passed an illegal bylaw permitting it to meet secretly.

André Marin said that when the Hamilton-area local health integration network passed the bylaw allowing board members to hold private discussions on closing emergency rooms, it flouted provincial legislation requiring their meetings to be held in public.

He said the “sneaky” actions had undermined public confidence not only in itself but also, by extension, other LHINs that adopted similar bylaws. “These meetings were plainly illegal,” he said.

The province has since stepped in to ensure that private LHIN board meetings for “educational” purposes can no longer be used to hold closed-door discussions on consolidating health services.

Since LHINs were set up to co-ordinate and rationalize health-care spending on the basis of local priorities instead of decisions imposed by Queen’s Park, secret meetings are clearly no way to achieve that goal.

Opposition Leader Tim Hudak has seized on the Ombudsman’s report as confirming a need to scrap the LHIN’s, which he sees as merely another layer of bureaucracy. Premier Dalton McGuinty concedes they need firmer government guidance, saying they must be publicly accountable, because that is why they were created in the first place.

In the circumstances, it’s likely that the LHINs will be an issue in next year’s provincial election. But it remains to be seen whether the triggering concern, the tendency of public bodies to do their real work out of the public eye, will become an issue in this year’s municipal elections.

We think it should.

Although the current Ontario government has amended the Municipal Act in hopes of seeing municipal councils conduct more of their business in public, there’s precious little evidence that the move has been successful.

One reason may be that while severely restricting the instances when councils must meet in camera, the Act has a long list of circumstances when they may hide from the public has no similar list of occasions when subjects must be discussed publicly.

Under the Act, in camera sessions are required only in two instances:

• If the subject matter relates to the consideration of a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and if the council, board, commission, or other body is the head of an institution for the purposes of that Act, and

• If the subject matter relates to a request for council approval to disclose information about hazards or risks to public safety, which the municipality has identified for the purposes of preparing a municipal emergency management program.

The Act lists seven instances when councils may meet privately, one of which, “potential litigation,” has opened the floodgate doors, since it’s almost impossible to conceive of an action by a council that would be immune to a court challenge.

In our view, the Act should be further amended to change “possible” to “threatened” litigation and to require sessions to be open to the public whenever the topic involves public expenditures.

The Act’s vagueness allowed the current Orangeville council to discuss its own remuneration privately. But those private sessions were improper and councillors did the right thing in repealing the bylaw and referring the issue to an arm’s length committee.

Hopefully, all candidates for office this time around will state publicly their own support for openness.