Kamloops mayor says his recent code of conduct complaints against councillors dismissed
Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson filed the three most recent council code of conduct complaints, and all three have been dismissed.
He said he was recently contacted by the investigator contracted for the job, who told him all three complaints would be tossed.
“I just got this and I’m not supposed to say nothing about it, but I’m saying lots about it,” the mayor said.
Hamer-Jackson filed three complaints against different councillors in April. For months he said he wanted to avoid burdening taxpayers with the costs, but changed his tune after being on the receiving end of multiple investigations since 2023.
It’s not clear how much the three investigations cost the City before they were dismissed.
Hamer-Jackson said they involved three separate councillors, whom he accused of making false and defamatory statements about him.
The vast majority of the complaints have been investigated by Reece Harding of the law firm Young Anderson, and Hamer-Jackson wanted someone else to take the job this time. He has been pushing for a private investigator to take over arguing Harding is a lawyer and not an investigator.
“Guess who did them all,” he said. “Reece Harding.”
Harding has a lengthy background in BC municipal law, including work as a municipal ethics commissioner.
The bylaw itself is new to Kamloops city council, coming into place after the 2022 election. The province required all municipalities to at least consider adopting one and it allows council to set a rulebook for their own conduct, then consider sanctions against those who breach it.
As of April, there have been 27 code of conduct complaints investigated, whether in full or abandoned. Harding has overseen the majority of them.
Just four have ended with a council conduct breach since July 2023. One was against Coun. Bill Sarai, but it was deemed trivial and ended with no sanctions against him. The remaining three ended with rulings against the mayor.
Hamer-Jackson breached privacy law in two cases and misled the public in another, according to the reports.
Taxpayers have so far paid around $300,000 for the investigations, of which nine have been dismissed, nine were withdrawn and five, including the three Hamer-Jackson filed, are still ongoing, according to the City website.
Of the two still ongoing, one has cost around $30,000 in a complaint that followed iNFOnews.ca reporting that revealed a secret recording made by Sarai. The other, reaching around $11,000, alleges Hamer-Jackson breached conflict of interest rules.
