Your Tax Dollars Pay Off Daily News
Signs Non-Disclosure Agreement
It was revealed at the special city council meeting of July 3 that the Nanaimo Daily News and the City of Nanaimo apparently reached a secret deal whereby your tax dollars will be compensating the Daily for losses incurred through the cancellation of the Leadercast simulcast.
Once again, this council made a decsion behind closed doors which legally binds both parties to secrecy, meaning that you and I will never find out how many of our tax dollars they set a match to once again.
Did Both Parties Insist On The Gag Order??
This may be a question that could be answered and may not be covered with the transparency-avoiding tactics employed once again by this city council. Did both parties insist on the gag order or did just one party to the agreement??
Did the Daily not want anyone to know how much money they got, or did the city not want taxpayers to know how much they have cost us through their ineptness? Was the non-disclosure a condition included in the offer but forward by the city?
If nothing else, this explains why the champion of rights and freedoms, that stalwart bastion of public information has been so quiet on this issue all along. It seems, it is usually all about the money.
So is that really how it works? Don't want the public to know? Well there's an easy fix just make it a confidential agreement. Then when the public asks those annoying questions about how many taxdollars you may have wasted you can just dodge, weave and divert attention by uttering nonsense like: "We can't reveal that information due to a confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement." I call BS on this. We will see what the FOI folks have to say about this. Seems to me that this amounts to the City being in a position to 'control" for political reasons what they want the public to know or NOT to know and also if this loophole is valid then what about accountability and possible abuse?
ReplyDeleteand here all this time the Daily News has been acting like it cared about 'community' when really, they are a wolf in another outfit......
ReplyDeleteThis article speaks volumes about the Nanaimo Daily News and local Government. Not much one can do about the News but come election time I'd say it's time for a clean sweep and a change.
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