Re: [council] Regarding voting rules for conflict of interest - proxies

[Stéphane Van Gelder <stephane.vangelder@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bruce,

Both you and Chuck make interesting points. Especially in the light of
recent discussions we've had in the Council about how Councillors can best
represent the views of their constituencies. There's no doubt that if a
constituency instructs its Councillors to vote a certain way on a certain
issue, said Councillors will be put in a very difficult situation if they
have a conflict of interest on that issue.

One (easy?) way to resolve this might simply be for Councillors to state
that they are voting as instructed by the constituency and not as a
reflection of their own personal views. This could then be recording in the
vote summary that goes to the Board for instance, or in the transcript that
is made publicly available.

However, I see several problems. The first one is that Councillors are
generally assumed to vote for their constituencies anyway, so why stress
that fact again? And what if a Councillor then votes without stating the
above, either because he forgets to, or because he doesn't have clear
instructions from his Constituency? Would people naturally assume his vote
is a reflection of his own personal views and accuse him or her of putting
those first?

It's a difficult one.

Stéphane


Le 15/07/09 06:01, « Bruce Tonkin » <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> a
écrit :

> 
> Hello Chuck,
> 
>> 
>> I agree with you that we should consider additional special situations
>> with regard to voting, but we will probably have to deal with
>> them after
>> we get finished with the huge current workload.
> 
> Sounds fair to me - just thought I would mention it, while we are
> considering voting rules.
> 
>>  It
>> doesn't seem to me that a constituency (or in the future a stakeholder
>> group) should lose a vote because their elected councilor has
>> a personal
>> conflict of interest.
> 
> Agreed.   But at the same time I do think the issue of personal
> conflicts of interest need to be taken into account.  So I think a
> mechanism that allows a constituency to retain their votes, but prevents
> an individual from being put in a difficult situation is worthwhile.
> 
> Another example in the past is how to handle elections  to the Board,
> where a candidate is a sitting Council member.  There has been a
> mechanism used in the past where the constituency can appoint a person
> to vote on behalf of the constituency, in place of the Council member.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Bruce Tonkin
>