Two Greater Sudbury councillors docked pay for making disparaging comments about city staff

Greater Sudbury council voted to impose penalties on two of its members following a report by the city's integrity commissioner.

David Boghosian investigated remarks made by Bill Leduc and Gerry Montpellier in a controversial public meeting held on September 7.

That meeting was hosted by a local community group who invited Road Surface Recyling to speak after the quality of the company's asphalt recycling pilot project on the Kingsway was deemed inadequate by the city.

The contractor, Frank Crupi, made several allegations of corruption and incompetence against city staff in the wake of the dispute.

In his report, Boghosian explains that being present at a meeting where negative views about the city and its staff does not in itself constitute a code of conduct offence.

"It's another matter, however, for councillors to jump on the staff bashing bandwagon by means of direct or indirect comments and actions," said Boghosian.

The integrity commissioner says that Bill Leduc named two city staff during that meeting and outed the personal relationship between them to the crowd.

"His statement was made with the intention of heaping further derision, ridicule and embarrassment on the city employees he outed, especially the female one," said Boghosian.

As for Montpellier, Boghosian found he asked "a rhetorical question designed to indirectly express his negative views about named city roads engineering staff to raise an issue from the past where he obviously believes city staff acted incompetently."

Boghosian recommended that Leduc's pay be suspended for 30 days. He added that, while less offensive, Montpellier did pile on the abuse and recommended his pay be docked for 10 days.

Montpellier was not present at Tuesday's council meeting and could not address his fellow council members before they voted to sanction him.

As for Leduc, he apologized for his remarks before asking his colleagues to consider reducing the proposed 30-day pay suspension.

However councillors voted unanimously to dock Leduc's pay for 30 days,while all but Councillor Michael Vagnini voted to adopt the 10-day pay suspensionrecommendation against Montpellier.

Vagnini was also present at the September 7 meeting but Boghosian says he did not do anything that breaches the code of conduct.