COUNTY OPTS FOR OMBUDSMAN

This ran on Orangeville.com………… comments invited below

By Chris Halliday

Facing a choice between the province’s watchdog or appointing an independent closed-door meeting investigator for 2012, Dufferin County is going with the former.
Last Thursday (Nov. 10), county council agreed to select the Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario as its closed meeting investigator for 2012, should any need for an investigation arise.
The provincial watchdog is the investigator for complaints in many municipalities across the province, except for those deciding to appoint their own — the county, as well as several other municipalities in Dufferin, including Melancthon and Mulmur, jumped on the Local Authority Services (LAS) train in 2011.
So why has the county changed course in 2012, you might ask?
“The Ombudsman won’t cost us anything and we think that they’re capable,” remarked Amaranth Deputy Mayor Walter Kolodziechuk, chair of the county’s General Government Services (GGS) Committee.
“We’ve seen some of their reports that they have submitted elsewhere and we think that they were appropriate reports, professional and we decided to go with them.”
On top of those potential cost-savings, it also appears to take the Ombudsman less time to complete a report when stacked up beside LAS, the GGS committee chair added.
“They’ve been dealing with these sorts of things all along. We see that the reports that they have put in seem to be timely,” Kolodziechuk said. “We think that we would get quicker service here, plus like I said, we’re always looking at the expenses and this will save a few dollars, not much, but some.”
LAS is a service provided by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO). The county didn’t have to foot any bills for closed session investigations conducted by LAS in 2011, however, Melancthon and Mulmur did.
It is not known whether the county’s recent decision to select the Ombudsman will perhaps push, or convince, any other municipalities in Dufferin to follow suit. But Kolodziechuk explained, at least one municipality in Dufferin may be considering the Ombudsman this time around.
“I think all the municipalities were kind of feeling their way, the same as the county, and this will be coming up again in budgets for this year,” Kolodziechuk said. “It will be interesting to see, I know in our municipality (Amaranth), we’ll certainly look at it.