by Don Peat, Toronto Sun

Toronto District School Board trustee Josh Matlow is trying to get his colleagues to approve a policy about funding trustees’ legal bills.

Matlow — who is running for a city council seat in the 2010 municipal election — said the move is needed now before trustees get themselves into the heaps of trouble Toronto city council now finds itself in.

“Let’s have a policy framework in place before we start making ad hoc decisions,” Matlow said Friday.

The Toronto Party, which wants political parties allowed at the municipal level, launched a lawsuit on Christmas Eve and is suing 23 city councillors who they say broke the law by reimbursing legal expenses two colleagues, Adrian Heaps and Giorgio Mammoliti, incurred as candidates, not councillors, in the last municipal election.

City council will have the chance to consider a motion on Tuesday to reconsider the payout.

Matlow and fellow trustee Chris Tonks want trustees to approve giving board legal staff the green light to write up a policy to govern when the board will cover legal expenses for candidates and when it won’t.

“If there is a clear policy that prohibits paying legal expenses for a trustee, who for example, has either settled or lost a libel suit, and it’s clear in writing, then it can’t happen at the TDSB,” Matlow said.

The two trustees want staff to include advice on how to prohibit covering legal costs incurred by an elected candidate that has been sued for libel or slander and settled or lost the lawsuit.

“We want to ensure that the folly at City Hall does not find it’s way to the TDSB,” Matlow said.

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BY JOSH MATLOW

Toronto District School Trustee for St. Paul's

TORONTO STAR, APRIL 22, 2009

Our city's parents, students and residents have asked the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), the City of Toronto and Queen's Park to find a long-term funding solution for Toronto's school pools.

Shamefully, what they have learned through their valiant efforts, turned accidental civics lesson, is that something is terribly wrong with how our municipal and education systems work together.

Toronto school trustees have voted themselves new guidelines that dictate who they can speak to, as well as when to end conversations if confidential matters arise.

In what one trustee is calling a violation of Charter rights, the Toronto District School Board decided Wednesday night to ban contact between a trustee and an employee of the board who is up for a promotion, without first clearing it with a school's superintendent.

Trustees must now also immediately end any conversation with a person who discloses information that could only have been obtained by a breach of confidentiality.

Violators could be hauled before the board's ethics committee, which recently banned Trustee Scott Harrison from a number of private meetings for discussing a personnel matter. The committee cannot fire a trustee.

"I understand what they are trying to get to, what I'm concerned about is ... that it's going way over their purview, into people's lives," said Trustee Josh Matlow, an outspoken critic on some board issues.

Matlow has written a letter to Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, asking her to "place the board's ethics review process under moratorium until the ministry has concluded its work" defining the roles and responsibilities of elected trustees across the province.

Board chair John Campbell called the guidelines mostly procedural, and said trustees can talk to people who are up for a promotion or who have applied for a position – but not about the new job.

There's no intention to police conversations, he said. "The intention is to protect the integrity of the process and protect people's privacy."

The board's ethics committee was struck about a year ago.

Campbell said when dealing with sensitive issues, it is "better to err on the side of caution."

Matlow says the ethics committee recently "found a member guilty of `complicity' in wrongdoing even though it explicitly found that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing."

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Public school trustees vote for muzzling ...

Dear Minister Wynne,
 
As you are aware, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) recently created an Ethics Review Committee to consider and make recommendations to the Board about the role of TDSB trustees, the Code of Ethics for trustees, meeting norms for trustees, procedures to address complaints about a breach of the Code of Ethics and to receive and consider complaints that a trustee has breached the TDSB Code of Ethics.

I respectfully submit to you that the TDSB’s ethics review process is fundamentally flawed, as it does not meet reasonable standards of natural justice and due process. Regretfully, my recent efforts to persuade the Board to amend the process have been summarily dismissed and I now write to you to bring this matter to your attention and invite you to intervene.   Read more....