Municipality bans recording of council meetings

I guess this is what passes for democracy in Lac du Bonnet:

Lac du Bonnet RM council has decided to forbid its public meetings from being recorded.

At its May 25 meeting, council passed an official resolution stating that any recording of public meetings is no longer authorized.

The move will affect one ratepayer in particular — Lac du Bonnet's Dave Fournier, who for two years has regularly used his hand-held digital voice recorder to record council meetings.

Fournier, a cattle farmer, said he's shocked the RM would bar him from taping their meetings.

"It's just not fair," he said. "I don't understand why they're so scared."

He said he has an interest in municipal politics and records the meetings simply for his own reference. He also has some reading difficulties and can't write very well, so taping the meetings ensures he can always go back and listen to them, rather than trying to read transcripts or take notes.

Reeve Rick Lussier said council is not comfortable with being recorded.

From the Lac du Bonnet Leader.

Council buys a pig in a poke

The Veolia contract passed today by a 9-4 vote. No word on whether the councillors finally got to look at the fine print on the contract before voting. Also no word on who the four dissenters were; I'm going to hazard a guess and assume Jenny Gerbasi, Dan Vandal, Russ Wyatt, and Harvey Smith, though I'd like to think John Orlikow would have voted against this too. Or did one of those five miss the vote for some reason?

Incidentally, the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation is now softening their criticism of the deal:

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling the approval of the contract a mixed blessing because the plants are in major need of an overhaul.

"It looks like a good proposal — what they're offering — but we're just asking for a little bit more in the way of details," Colin Craig said.

A condition of the deal is that Veolia must save the city money.

I guess Colin and company would prefer not to be remembered as having been on the losing side...

Edited to add: Turns out Orlikow did vote against it... but Wyatt, of all people, voted for it. And Lillian Thomas missed the vote.

Taking government secrecy to a new level

As you probably know, Winnipeg's esteemed mayor and his buddies on EPC are trying to get city council to agree to a wastewater treatment contract with Veolia Canada. Now it's pretty common for a government to keep the fine print of such contracts a secret from the public. This isn't good enough for Katz and his cronies, though; they're keeping it secret from themselves:

It's a deal so secret not even the mayor has seen the financial fine print.

It locks city hall into a 30-year contract with a multinational mega-firm and marks a big shift in policy.

Now critics from the left and the right are calling on councillors to step back from the brink of a $1.2-billion deal with Veolia Canada to privatize the renovation and parts of the operation of two city sewage treatment plants.

Council votes on the deal Wednesday.

"The partnership proposes to reduce rates and improve results for taxpayers so that's a good thing," said Colin Craig of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. "However, councillors should ask to see the final contract before it's approved. Like they say, the devil is in the details."

Craig said as much of the deal should also be made public as possible without violating Veolia's business interests.

Several left-leaning groups -- the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the union representing city workers -- agree, saying Veolia's reputation is "less than stellar" and serious questions about the contract remain unanswered.

From the Free Press. When the CTF agrees with the Council of Canadians and the CCPA, you know there must be something badly wrong somewhere...

Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion

Seems a lot of money to hand out in secret, no?

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

Source. You'd think it would be in the public's interest to know what the government is doing with that much money, wouldn't you? I mean, it's not a matter of national security or anything, is it?