The City of Prince George will not reveal how much it spent on legal costs associated with Coun. Brian Skakun's breach of the Privacy Act.
However a freedom of information request did reveal that Skakun's release of the confidential Kitty Heller Report to the CBC in August 2008 cost the city $12,000, paid to an unnamed individual in exchange for a promise the person wouldn't sue.
The Kitty Heller Report was prepared for the city in 2008 and detailed an investigation into allegations that senior civilian staffer Ann Bailey harassed her coworkers Sheri McLean-Smith and Linda Thompson while all three worked at the Prince George RCMP detachment. In her report, Heller cleared Bailey of harassment but found Bailey's common-law relationship with then-RCMP detachment commander Supt. Dahl Chambers to be a conflict of interest.
Following a separate RCMP investigation, Chambers was forced to formally apologize to Thompson, Bailey and Sheri McLean-Smith.
Bailey could not be reached for comment as of press time.
Legal costs shrouded
In a letter dated Jan. 12, city legislative services manager Walter Babicz said the city will not disclose its legal costs related to a trial that found Skakun guilty of breaching the Privacy Act and resulted in a $750 fine for the councillor.
The city also refused to disclose the cost associated with the B.C. Supreme Court trial resulting from Skakun's application for an injunction to prevent city council from censuring him. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act allows the city to refuse to disclose any information subject to lawyer-client privilege, Babicz wrote in his response to The Citizen's FOI.
Numerous cases and orders of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. have considered privilege under section 14 of the act as it applies to the disclosure of legal expenses, Babicz wrote. The head of the city for the purposes of the act [city manager Derek Bates] has considered your request and had decided to withhold the responsive statements of account in their entirety, pursuant to section 14 of the act.
Babicz pointed to privacy commissioner Paul Fraser's review into a request for School District 49 (Central Coast) legal costs relating to two court cases.
In June 7, 2010, Fraser ruled that School District 49 was right to refuse to disclose copies of legal invoices from the district's lawyer.
However, Fraser ordered the district to release, the total amount of payment and the name of the law firm, from two summary documents the school district kept in the cases.
Bates and Mayor Shari Green did not returned calls as of press time. However, Babicz said he would re-examine the commissioner's order and consult with Bates on the matter of releasing the total cost to the city.
However, he said, no cost summary documents, like those ordered to be released in the School District 49 case, exist on the Skakun trial.
[And] it's highly uncommon to forgo solictor-client privilege, Babicz said.
Revealing what the city paid in the Skakun case may expose what the city is prepared to spend on legal battles in any future cases, he added.
Skakun said his own legal costs for the trial and B.C. Supreme Court petition totaled over $20,000.
It was easily over $20,000 of my own money, and I had a fair bit of support from donors, Skakun said.
Skakun declined to comment on the $12,000 paid to the person named in the report.
