Bowman must clear the air on Joshi

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/02/2015 (3913 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mayor Brian Bowman is obliged to fill in the blanks about the suspension and forced resignation of Deepak Joshi, the city’s acting chief administrative officer. The city says it’s a personnel matter, but the public interest outweighs concerns about privacy in this case.

That’s because the circumstances surrounding Mr. Joshi’s departure raise troubling questions about the mayor himself, particularly whether he acted precipitously and without just cause in suspending the senior civil servant.

If the suspension and subsequent resignation were justified, then the public is entitled to know the reason. Mr. Joshi was not a low-level worker, but a powerful administrator whose misdeeds, if any, should be disclosed in the public interest.

There is also the question of severance. A large payout would suggest the city did not have good reasons to smear Mr. Joshi’s reputation, while a small sum might suggest the opposite.

The public will eventually know what Mr. Joshi was paid under the rules of public-sector compensation disclosure. It might take a couple of years, though, because severed employees can spread out their severance over more than one year.

In the case of former CAO Phil Sheegl, who resigned in 2013 before he could be fired or suspended, the records show he would have received only a small severance, but this year’s records will reveal the full amount.

The public, in other words, will eventually know the final figure for Mr. Joshi, but it is entitled to an answer today, and there is no valid reason why it should not be disclosed.

It has never been clear why Mr. Joshi was suspended in January; the mayor merely said he had lost confidence in the man.

One theory was the mayor was upset about not being kept in the loop on a property deal between CentreVenture and True North Sports & Entertainment. Email records, however, show Mr. Joshi sent several messages and briefings to the mayor’s chief of staff on the issue last November, a few weeks after the civic election.

Other details that have since been disclosed also show the CentreVenture matter would not have been a valid reason for suspending the official.

Another theory is Mayor Bowman was upset about learning from the media police had interviewed civic employees in connection with a probe into the construction of the new police headquarters building.

The mayor has also expressed frustration with the administration’s slow response to a series of audits into civic real estate boondoggles. If so, we’ll see if events move quicker under a new CAO.

Finally, some councillors said they thought the mayor was generally unhappy with the flow of information from the administration to council, a common complaint over the decades at city hall.

None of these seems like a valid reason to disgrace an official who never asked to be named acting CAO. He made it clear he did not want the job permanently, either because he didn’t feel qualified or, more likely, because he didn’t want the grief.

Without knowing the specific cause of Mr. Joshi’s demise, then, the public is entitled to be skeptical about whether the mayor acted appropriately, or if his public denunciation of an unelected official was abusive.

The mayor has shown a tendency to react without acquiring the facts first.

Mr. Joshi may have been a convenient scapegoat for the mayor; a way to show taxpayers he was acting decisively to clean up city hall, or maybe he was a civil servant with undisguised contempt for elected officials and their concerns for due process.

The problem is we don’t know which story is true.

And until we do, Mr. Bowman’s ability to manage civic affairs will be hobbled.

The man who ran for office on a campaign of transparency and trust must clear the air.