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10 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday March 5, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Councillors don't want to open floodgates to complaints regarding closed-door meetings By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Councillors have balked at appointing an investigator to look into closed door Town Council meetings for fear it could spark frivolous claims. Councillors deferred a motion to appoint Local Authority Services Ltd. (LAS) as a neutral investigator pending a staff examination of the possibility of cost-recovery initiatives against those who bring on investigations without merit. The program, which has its origins in Provincial Bill 130, was introduced to increase the transparency and accountability of municipalities. This legislation stated that as of Jan. 1, 2008 a person may request that an investigation be undertaken into whether a particular municipality's closed meeting was warranted. Currently, as Oakville has no policy in place concerning this program, the Ontario Ombudsman investigates these "For $125 someone can instigate an investigation that might cost us thousands of dollars." Ward 6 Councillor Max Khan claims. Where the proposed program runs into trouble, as far as councillors are concerned, is the relatively simply way an investigation can be triggered. Under the proposed policy a complainant would have to pay a fee of $125 to prompt an investigation.. The concern councillors have stems from the fact that LAS would charge the Town over $1,000 a day to investigate a claim. "For $125 someone can instigate an investigation that might cost us thousands of dollars," said Ward 6 Councillor Max Khan, when the matter arose at last week's Administrative Services Committee. "Setting the fee that low might instigate frivolous claims." Khan noted that setting the fee higher would do no harm to serious complainants because their money would be refunded if the investigator found the complaint to be viable. Ward 5 Councillor Jeff Knoll called for a cost-recovery initiative instead. "Transparency is important and I'm in favour of the $125 fee or no fee at all because we don't want to exclude valid complaints because people can't afford the fee. For some people, $125 is not a lot of money, for other people having a hard time, it's a weeks worth of groceries," said Knoll. "A cost-recovery initiative for the investigations is better because there are people out there who just want to challenge everything we do and they need to know that if they abuse this program they could be called to account for it."