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My comments referenced on LFPress.com blog post “Tight-lipped Fair out of touch”

August 12, 2010 at 11:32 pm Leave a comment

Columnist Ian Gillespie pursues the issue of stonewalling the press in his blog In The Margin, with his post,  Tight-lipped Fair out of touch, where he comments on city officials’ resistance to disclose their participation in ‘private’ Western Fair meetings while preciding over decisions that have public impact, as reported in the London Free Press article highlighted in my previous post.

Updated: Here are some additional thoughts sent to Ian Gillespie further to his piece “Tight-Lipped Western Fair”:

 If the City Council members are denying you and other London media access to the WFA meeting agendas then perhaps they are in fact covering up more than meets the eye.

 It has occurred to me, as it probably may have also with you and your editor and colleagues, that perhaps these agenda items were not only discussions pertaining to disabled person’s entrance fees but may have also contained points about Fair contracts for which Councillors or their friends and family are personally and monetarily benefitting.

Such contracts from which they could be benefitting could range from concession spaces to sale/purchase/conveyance of real estate in the area, or even city service arrangements, and therefore it would be in their interest to maintain a “tight-lipped” sidestepping of your earlier questions.

 If this proves true, needless to say, this would be a very provocative and disturbing turn of events. It still remains to be seen if the Councillors can continue to avoid your straightforward questions in this regard.

 Clearly, the Councillors need to be reminded by you and your paper that they have an ethical if not legal obligation to disclose to the citizens of the City what kind of business they are transacting in “secret” at the WFA meetings. They need to be reminded that as Public Servants everything they do in the name of the People by definition needs to be public.

 I think this issue is worth pursuing.

Entry filed under: Journalism, London Free Press, London Ontario, News & Views, Western Fair.