Windsor Is Only A Small Town, Really

By Ed Arditti

I know that the Mayor likes to throw around the word “world-class” whenever he has one of his mind’s eye visions. I guess it makes him feel good to do so thinking that he actually might live in a big city rather than in a town with a population that is probably around 200,000 or even less now with all the unemployed people who moved out of here looking for jobs elsewhere.

Of course, when he comes up with one of these ideas, the Star Columnists have to compare us with all of the locations around the world to make us feel good that we are spending so much money on these white elephants rather than using it for silly things like roads and sewers and watermains.

I wanted to do a Blog about why Dwight Duncan, Deputy Premier/Minister of Finance and one of the two MPPs for Windsor, has been invisible on the Auditor General Termination fiasco. Ultimately, whether he wants to or not, he’s going to get dragged into it. I wanted to try to explain why he is not out in front of this matter rather than being forced to react to it down the road.

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/2012/03/windsor-is-only-a-small-town-really/

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Zalev and the A-word

By Anne Jarvis

Audits? What audits? If I had a nickel for every time Max Zalev told me “Enwin is audited all the time,” I’d be rich.

Zalev has told me this so many times that it should be the corporation’s new slogan, carved above the entrance to its building on Ouellette Avenue, emblazoned on its trucks criss-crossing the city, stamped at the top of my monthly bill, which I send to my accountant to decipher.

Zalev, of course, is chairman of Windsor’s audit committee and CEO of Enwin Utilities, which is owned by the city. (Lots of people think that’s a conflict of interest.)

Here, straight from my notes, for the record, is what Zalev has said.

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Jarvis+Zalev+word/6275238/story.html

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TAMA Demands: Open the Books At Enwin/WUC

By Ed Arditti

You have two choices on Saturday morning. Sleep in or join up with your fellow Windsorites. Just keep on reading

Hip, hip, hooray!

The Star finally did an Editorial on the stink that one can smell all over the City. No, not about the Langlois affair and the lack of audit of WUC/Enwin but about skunks. Now that is the kind of hard-hitting, relevant, up-to-the-minute, decisive, public spirited journalism that Paul Godfrey obviously wants for his Postmedia newspapers.

Oh me, oh my. And here I was thinking that I was protected by the Ontario Energy Board who did all these high-priced audits on Enwin according to our Leaders.

Turns out, if one reads Annie and Dave Battagello in the Star today, that this is not so.

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/2012/03/tama-demands-open-the-books-at-enwinwuc/

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Is The City Of Windsor Hiding Something

By Ed Arditti

Slowly but surely the rights of citizens are being eaten away. Secrecy above all has become the rule in Windsor.

I must admit I don’t understand the reason for it all. It really isn’t all that complicated running a town the size of Windsor. Why is there the need to keep so much information away from us?

Are our Leaders so afraid that we cannot handle the truth? Are they keeping away the truth from us because it would be so horrific for us to know? Or could it be something worse or at least something that can give rise to such a concern?

This is not an academic concern. The last thing that we need in this City at this time is to be distracted. Yet we are. The Langlois affair is a disgrace. And then I read Council Halberstadt’s Blog today and was extremely disgusted. I’ll talk about it later.

I found this commentary in the Detroit Metro Times very interesting:

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/2012/03/is-the-city-of-windsor-hiding-something/

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Asleep at the switch

By Anne Jarvis

The ultimate custodians of the public interest are the people we elect to represent us.

So the question in the tortuous four-year quest for an auditor general in Windsor is, where have councillors been?

Did anyone, besides Coun. Alan Halberstadt, raise an eyebrow when former city auditor Mike Dunbar, one of the whistleblowers in the MFP scandal, quit in 2007, complaining of political interference?

Did anyone wonder why, after council approved hiring an auditor general in 2008, we languished 18 months without one?

Did anyone, besides Halberstadt, start connecting the dots when, after finding a prospective AG in 2010, it took so long – six months – to approve the appointment that the candidate said forget it?

Surely someone, other than Halberstadt, sat up and listened when lead auditor Angela Berry, who had done yeoman’s work, suddenly left on leave last year, hired a lawyer and filed a harassment complaint, accusing the city of being a toxic place to work.

And finally, who, besides Halberstadt, now dismissed as a contrarian, raised a voice after being told Todd Langlois, the first and highly touted auditor general (whose hiring had also been delayed), had to go after only nine months?

No one.

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Jarvis+Asleep+switch/6238845/story.html

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There Is Only One Person Left To Be Blamed

By Ed Arditti

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Annie has done it now in her column in the Star on March 2, 2012 “Asleep at the switch.” If this slamming of Council does not stick, then there is no turning back.

There really is only one more chapter that she can write in her book about the Langlois affair. I expect that she does not want to write it but she has put herself in the position where she has no other choice but to do so.

I find it very interesting. The Star Editors can write a scathing Editorial about the Ornge helicopter scandal but not a word about the Auditor General fiasco:

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/2012/03/02/there-is-only-one-person-left-to-be-blamed/

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“Politicizing the process … and the bureaucracy”

By Ed Arditti

Oh, oh. City CAO Helga Reidel has got to be worrying today. What did she do to deserve this she must be wondering? Annie in her Star column on February 29, 2012 has painted a target on her as another person who might have to take the blame for the Auditor General being forced out. First Zalev and now Helga. If this does not work, then who is next?

Annie describes how Administration wanted to endrun Todd Langlois with respect to possible fraud investigations at City Hall. The approval process that Annie described is frankly unbelievable and supports the view that Mr. Langlois was considered too dangerous and had to have his wings clipped. Obviously, they were clipped permanently given his multi-million dollar lawsuit against the City:

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/2012/02/29/politicizing-the-process-and-the-bureaucracy/

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Is There A “Dirty Tricks” Campaign Going On In Windsor

By Ed Arditti

It is no longer about Todd Langlois only. He just happened to be in the wrong place and at the wrong time as far as I am concerned. It would have happened to anyone who was in his position if he/she did the same things. While it is important that we determine truth of what happened so that Mr. Langlois is being treated fairly, there is something even more important at stake: the proper governance of this City.

I am concerned that we are seeing a possible “dirty tricks” campaign. You know the Watergate cliché as well as I do: it is no longer only is there a “crime” but is there a “cover-up” as well.

The phrase “dirty tricks” is defined this way by Wikipedia:

“Dirty tricks are unethical, duplicitous, slanderous or illegal tactics employed to destroy or diminish the effectiveness of political or business opponents. The term “dirty trick” can also be used to refer to an underhanded technique to get ahead of an opponent.”

While such tactics have been going on for hundreds of years and are still ongoing– look at the robo-call scandal involving the last Federal election campaign– most of us probably understand that term from the Watergate scandal.

I was having breakfast Saturday morning and all of a sudden I got very angry. It was even before I read mini-Gord’s column. I don’t like what is going on in the City of Windsor. It is beyond comprehension to me how the Todd Langlois affair happened in the first place and how it is spiraling out of control. Every day it seems we are learning new facts that seem to contradict what was said before.

However, the tragedy is that we have no one who is in a position to take a look at the books and records of City Departments and organizations to protect the interest of taxpayers and we will not be in such a position for who knows how long I would bet. Get real, the City won’t do anything meaningful before the next municipal election.

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/2012/02/26/is-there-a-dirty-tricks-campaign-going-on-in-windsor/

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Why Did The Audit Committee Members Need A Lawyer

Why Did The Audit Committee Members Need A Lawyer

I must admit that I found it rather bizarre that the Audit Committee members needed to bring a lawyer to the meeting that they requested with the Windsor Star. Was he there to help them out if the questioning got too tough? In fact, I find it bizarre that the Audit Committee went there at all.

Why didn’t they hold a Town Hall meeting with citizens present to get their story across and to allow taxpayers of Windsor to question them to get answers rather than just go to the Messenger. Why, Councillor Dwight-Lite would have been thrilled to provide the technology for them to do so. After all, according to the Star more than 22,000 callers came to Dwight-Lite’s HUM session. I would bet that the number would increase dramatically if there was an Audit Committee Town Hall session.

Heck, I would have thought that the City Council would have demanded their presence at the next Council meeting so that the Councillors could interrogate them in public in front of the TV cameras almost as well as they interrogated the Senior Level officials during the Greenlink/DRIC road cross-examinations. You remember the masterful job that was done by Council members to make those people look so foolish even though the Senior Levels completely ignored Council and built the DRIC road exactly as they intended.

All we know is what the Star told us went on. I must admit that I am disappointed that the Star, who must have been videoing the session since they posted part of it, has not posted it all online so far. It must be really bad for them not to do so.

I do take offence that the Audit Committee has not seen fit to meet with the Windsor Square Editorial Board but then again, they might not like to hear some of our questions.

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/2012/02/24/why-did-the-audit-committee-members-need-a-lawyer/

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Audit committee meeting clarifies little

By Anne Jarvis

The city’s audit committee, besieged by allegations of conflict of interest and interference since auditor general Todd Langlois was fired, requested a meeting with The Windsor Star’s editorial board Thursday to “help clarify” the issues.

Here’s their clarification, provided with the aid of a lawyer from Toronto who said he was there purely out of interest: The chairman of the committee, Max Zalev, does not have a conflict of interest – even though he is also the CEO of Enwin Utilities, which Langlois had planned to audit; there was never any attempt to influence Langlois’ work – despite emails showing his reports being blocked; and there had been problems with Langlois for months before he was fired – although none of these problems were documented.

Yup. It’s clear all right. After weeks of revealing interviews and documents and calls for Ontario’s auditor general to investigate, nothing is changing. The powers that be are digging in.

Zalev repeated that he does not have a conflict of interest.

If an issue involving Enwin comes before the committee, he said, “I have to make the decision to declare a conflict.”

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Jarvis+Audit+committee+meeting+clarifies+little/6202123/story.html

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