Before Vancouver council could put the brakes on her work next week, Integrity Commissioner Lisa Southern outflanked them Friday in releasing two reports they likely wish would not have seen the light of day.
In broad outline, the reports portray efforts by senior city officials to extend their reach into decision-making of the city’s park board, and the rancorous relationship between the board’s top commissioners and the office of Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim.
The mayor has pledged to eliminate the park board and transfer its duties back to him and his council, even though his slate of ABC candidates won office in 2022.
The two reports relate to each other. One is a complaint from Brennan Bastyovanszky, an independent chair of the park board who was once part of Sim’s ABC slate. The other is a complaint by the mayor’s chief of staff, Trevor Ford, and the mayor’s senior advisor, David Grewal, against Bastyovanszky and fellow commissioner Scott Jensen, another former ABC member.
Southern dismissed both complaints, but in providing her reasons to do so, she had to shed light on what prompted them.
In one report, Southern wrote that Bastyovanszky complained that Sim, or those acting on his behalf, pressured him to step down as the board’s vice-chair, dictated to commissioners who should be hired as the board’s general manager, falsely claimed to councillors and commissioners that he was under investigation by the integrity commissioner, tried to pressure commissioners to choose someone other than him as its chair, and ultimately moved to dissolve the park board “because he was unable to control decisions of Park Board Commissioners.”
In dismissing the complaint, Southern noted there was no direct link to Sim with the actions of Ford and Grewal, nor any evidence of retaliation.
In the other report, Southern noted Ford and Grewal complained that Jensen recorded two phone conversations and permitted Bastyovanszky to listen to one of them. In the call, Ford and Grewal told Jensen he should support Sim’s choice as park board chair and that Bastyovanszky was under “active investigation” by the integrity commissioner that would disqualify him as a candidate for the role.
There was no investigation underway, although senior PNE officials had written the integrity commissioner with no more than what Southern called “hearsay and double hearsay” about an occurrence involving Bastyovanszky backstage at a concert, so the complaint wasn’t investigated.
Southern concluded that the recordings were legal and weren’t harmful to Ford and Grewal.
Vancouver council is holding a special meeting next Tuesday to freeze the work of Southern while it conducts a review of the city’s mandate to enforce a code of conduct for the mayor and council.
At a council meeting last week, ABC Coun. Brian Montague introduced a motion to ask city staff to develop a plan to review the commissioner’s mandate later this fall. After a short recess, though, ABC Coun. Lenny Zhou introduced an amendment to Montague’s motion that would freeze Southern’s investigations of complaints for an indeterminate period while a review takes place.
Five ABC councillors supported the amendment: Montague, Zhou, Mike Klassen, Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung. Two councillors opposed it: Green Party’s Adriane Carr and OneCity’s Christine Boyle. Sim, ABC Coun. Rebecca Bligh and Green Coun. Pete Fry were absent from the meeting.
Critics quickly interpreted the move as an attempt to silence the commissioner, whose role is to review public complaints about elected municipal officials. Opponents of the dominant ABC party wondered whether active complaints under investigation by the commissioner would be thwarted by the mandate review because it would ultimately reduce the commissioner’s scope. Southern moved Friday in advance of that process to complete the work and publicly report on the two contentious complaints.
To suspend Southern’s work, a bylaw requires “a 2/3 vote of all council members” — eight of 11, in this case, not the five who ultimately voted. It also is unclear if her work for the park board as its integrity commissioner ceases, because that board would need to vote on it separately.
Southern’s own annual report last Dec. 1 identified the need for clarity on her mandate and scope of work and recommended some simple steps. Council has since renewed her term, but now seems destined for a protracted period to review her mandate as her work ceases.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism.
