Orillia Mayor Steve Clarke says he isn’t the only council member who was concerned about a revelation during a closed-session meeting that led him to file a complaint with that city’s integrity commissioner.
Principles Integrity has recommended Coun. Jay Fallis’s pay be temporarily suspended after it found he breached the city’s code of conduct by providing confidential information to a lawyer he retained.
Fallis revealed during the closed-session meeting that he had provided private information about the waterfront development plan to the lawyer. Clarke filed a complaint “soon thereafter.”
“I saw the reaction of members of council,” he said, adding some asked what would happen next. “It’s safe to say the feelings I had were had around the council table — surprise or shock.”
He also denied a claim by Fallis — made in an email exchange with his lawyer and shared in the integrity commissioner’s report — that Clarke “suggested (Fallis) now had a conflict of interest and needed to leave” the meeting.
“I would not have done that and did not do that,” Clarke said.
He said he sometimes asks if anyone has a conflict, but it is up to individual council members to make that call.
“I never tell a member of council that they have a conflict,” he said.
The mayor wouldn’t comment on the integrity commissioner’s recommendation that Fallis’s pay be suspended for 30 to 45 days. He says he is saving that for Monday’s council meeting, when the matter will be discussed.
However, he suggested Fallis might find more forgiveness from council if he “came forward and said, ‘I made a mistake,’ and there is some remorse.”
That has not happened. In a statement issued Friday, Fallis said, “If the price I must pay for seeking legal advice is a code violation, then I will go forward, code violation in hand, steadfast in the belief that I have served my constituents well.”
Clarke says he sees this situation as an anomaly in what have been a relatively harmonious two terms of council.
“We’ve had a great team for many years, and this deviation from that teamwork is unfortunate. It’s OK to disagree, but you still have to follow the rules,” he said.
“I’m hoping for great teamwork moving forward. There needs to be confidence among the team that we’ll follow the rules.”
