A Council member who breaches the District’s code of conduct bylaw will face a pay cut.
At a meeting today, Council plans to amend the Remuneration and Expenses Bylaw to introduce new clauses on salary cuts. If a Council member is found by an investigator to have breached the code of conduct bylaw, the remuneration will be reduced by 10% for 12 months from the date on which Council considers the investigator’s report.
If a Councilor breaches the bylaw for a second time, the remuneration will be reduced by 15% for one year from the investigator’s report, and 25% for the breach of the bylaw for the third time. However, this won’t apply if the investigator has determined that the Council member took all reasonable steps to prevent the breach, the breach was trivial or inadvertent, or the breach was because of an error in judgment made in good faith.
Council adopted the current Council and Committee Member Code of Conduct Policy in 2016 and recently updated the policy. The key components of the policy include the requirement for members to act in the public interest, maintain fair, open and honest conduct, to respect process, to base all decisions on merits, to act in accordance with conflict of interest rules and to adhere to statutory rules on confidential information.
