www.thesuburban.com<\/a><\/p>\nAt a Sunday news conference, Mayor Marc Demers announced that Laval intends to open a municipal ethics bureau. <\/p>\n
According to Laval\u2019s top civil servant, Serge Lamontagne, the city\u2019s new eight-person ethics office will report operationally to Laval Police. He said that the mandate of the new organization, which will have a $1 million annual budget, will be to conduct investigations to counter collusion, defalcation and other misuse of taxpayers\u2019 money. <\/p>\n
The measure was one of four initiatives that he planned to introduce at Monday\u2019s city council meeting, shortly after The Suburban<\/i> went to press. <\/p>\n
The mayor said in a statement that he intends to release the city lawyers from their professional oath of secrecy upon request, in their dealings with Quebec\u2019s anti-corruption police force and the Charbonneau inquiry into collusion in the province\u2019s construction industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will ensure that council requests and follows through on them,\u201d Mayor Demers promised.<\/p>\n
He also plans to beef up the powers of the city\u2019s ombudsman and auditor general. <\/p>\n
Both offices have historically been hobbled by previous administrations, which starved them of resources and the previous ombudsman, Diane Lemelin, was fired during the rule of one of Demers\u2019 predecessors as mayor, Alexandre Duplessis. <\/p>\n
\u201cHenceforth, the ombudsman will be empowered use her judgement to receive, assess and follow through on citizens\u2019 requests,\u201d vowed Mayor Demers. <\/p>\n
Laval\u2019s auditor general will get the power to spend money on contracting out services. The move was mooted as making the office more independent of city council by letting it use third-party firms to conduct future audits without having to ask municipal politicians\u2019 permission. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese two bodies function as citizens\u2019 watchdogs,\u201d concluded Mayor Demers. \u201cThe have to remain independent.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Frees city lawyers to talk to corruption investigators By Robert Frank www.thesuburban.com At a Sunday news conference, Mayor Marc Demers announced that Laval intends to open a municipal ethics bureau. According to Laval\u2019s top civil servant, Serge Lamontagne, the city\u2019s new eight-person ethics office will report operationally to Laval Police. He said that the mandate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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