He’s being pushed after refusing to go

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This article was published 17/01/2015 (3949 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If senior City of Winnipeg officials were Survivor contestants, Deepak Joshi was the person to place your money on.

Winnipeg’s acting chief administrative officer, suspended from his duties Friday, always appeared to be one step ahead of whatever trouble was emanating from across the city hall courtyard, where the politicians dwell. His career soared during the past seven years — he was one of the most prominent figures of the Sam Katz administration.

A former information-technology specialist, Joshi first rose to prominence as the development and inspections manager in Winnipeg’s planning, property and development department. He made a name for himself chasing around North End ne’er-do-wells such as the late gang associate Ray Rybachuk.

Joshi’s performance as a manager earned him a promotion to planning and property director in 2008, succeeding Phil Sheegl, who served mere months in that position before becoming a deputy chief administrative officer.

After Sheegl was named chief administrative officer in 2011, Joshi was promoted to chief operating officer. Then in 2013, when Sheegl resigned amid a cloud of scandal, Joshi was named acting CAO, against the wishes of councillors who noted he played a role in the pilloried fire-paramedic station construction program.

Every rise in Joshi’s late career seemed to follow a move by Sheegl, the Katz confidante who came to personify city hall’s “get ’er done” mentality.

Joshi was present at the infamous “50,000 feet” meeting in 2012, when Sheegl sat alongside other senior city officials and declared there was nothing untoward about the fire-paramedic station project.

Joshi was COO in 2013, when Winnipeg’s corporate management took issue with the damning conclusions of the fire-paramedic station audit. He was acting CAO in 2014, when the same senior managers took issue with the even more damning conclusions of the real estate and police-headquarters audits.

Joshi’s visible role in the old city hall made it a safe bet he wouldn’t last long as acting CAO under Mayor Brian Bowman, who arrived in October with a promise to sandblast the interior of the administration building.

But if there was no cause in 2013 to dismiss Joshi — or any senior city official, with the exception of fire-paramedic chief Reid Douglas — there would be no cause in 2014 for Bowman to usher Joshi out the door.

At first, the new mayor struck a conciliatory tone with his acting CAO, going as far as defending Joshi in public when the gadfly David Sanders appeared before executive policy committee and talked about power’s corrupting influence.

That was late November. By the middle of December, relations between the council and administration building had soured to the point where barbs were flying in both directions, at least behind closed doors.

It’s uncertain what precisely prompted Bowman to suspend the acting CAO. Sources claim the mayor’s office was unhappy after learning from media that the RCMP interviewed city staff as part of their criminal probe of the police headquarters. The mayor himself said Friday he was unhappy with the “quantity and quality” of information about the hotel that was supposed to serve an expanded convention centre.

What is clear is Bowman wants to dismiss Joshi on a permanent basis. Once you have lost confidence in the person leading your public service, that person is as good as gone.

When Katz’s relationship soured with former CAO Annitta Stenning in 2007, she resigned. When Katz lost confidence in former CAO Glen Laubenstein in 2010, he too resigned — in the midst of an election campaign, to boot.

Sheegl resigned days before the fire-paramedic audit singled him out as the primary person responsible for the troubled construction program.

Joshi, however, did not give up his position. His reluctance to resign baffled observers, who maintained it was only a matter of time before the new council brought in a broom.

Maybe it was hubris. Maybe he believed he was invincible. Or maybe nobody believed anyone would ever get tossed from a city hall where no one — not even Douglas — has ever been held accountable for the scandals of the past four years. To put it bluntly, even if Joshi is not responsible for a single act of malfeasance, this city cannot move on from scandal as long as he remains at the helm.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca