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Is there nepotism in City Hall? Most councillors don't think so

Mayor Provenzano, former mayor Steve Butland and Peter Niro, director of human resources, all insist there's no nepotism problem at City Hall. Two city councillors beg to differ
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The International Bridge is seen reflected in Civic Centre windows on August 7, 2016. David Helwig/SooToday.

There are two guys with the same last name as Mayor Provenzeno working in Sault Ste. Marie's fire department.

There are two other guys named Coccimiglio toiling in the city's information technology department. And those two Coccimiglios even have the same first name Frank.

So City Hall must have a nepotism problem, right? Not a chance, says Ward 1 Councillor Steve Butland, who served as mayor from 1996 to 2000.

"This is a non-issue in Sault Ste. Marie. Let's not make it one," Butland insists.
 
Two city councillors, Frank Fata in Ward 5 and Ozzie Grandinetti in Ward 6, believe otherwise.
 
Unqualified people get hired at the city because they know somebody, Fata and Grandinetti say.
 
At a City Council meeting last week, Grandinetti went so far as to state: "This happens every day."

Grandinetti's assertion was immediately attacked by Mayor Provenzano and former mayor Butland.

"Councillor Grandinetti, it does not happen every day," said the mayor. "You've got no basis for the statement that happens every day. You can admit to that."

A gross exaggeration
 
"I'd like to have one concrete example from last week where this nepotism has reared its ugly head," growled Butland.
 
"And if it's happening every day you know full well that's a gross exaggeration. It is not happening. We're talking about perception and the very fact that we've had this discussion puts some credibility and credence to the fact that it's happening," Butland added.
 
But Grandinetti stood his ground.
 
"I will challenge this tomorrow on the phone. I won't do it in public," he told Provenzano.
 
The exchange about city hiring practices occurred in response to a resolution from Grandinetti and Ward 3 Councillor Matthew Shoemaker:
Whereas a perception exists locally that family members of existing staff are given preference for city positions; and
Whereas such a perception negatively affects the trust of residents in the operations of the city; and
 
Whereas a city policy already exists that regulates nepotism in the city's hiring practices; and
 
Whereas full transparency of the facts is the best way to counter this perception;
 
Now therefore be it resolved that once yearly staff report to council on how many of the city's employees across all departments are related to one another without the use of names of those employees, but simply by providing numbers and percentages for council's information.
Grandinetti said he became interested in the issue "back in 2010 when I was acting mayor when Mayor John passed away. A relative of a city employee received a job that... was not qualified for."
 
"This ends up costing the taxpayer money, when you hire someone that's not qualified for the job and then we end up paying for it, for them to get qualified for the job," Grandinetti said. "I think we have too many relatives and friends of city staff that get hired here. It doesn't give the opportunity to someone that's not related to get a job here."
 
Councillor Shoe
 
Shoemaker's reasons for seconding the motion were rather different from Grandinetti's.
 
"What I do think is important is that we simply show the community what percentage of folks here are related to one another," Shoemaker said. "I think it would in fact be much lower than people presume it is. There's this perception out there that you have to be related if you're going to get a job at City Hall."
 
""The motion doesn't call for us to use names, so we're not looking to finger-point in any way, shape or form," Shoemaker said.
 
"I think showing the percentage  I don't know if it's one per cent or five per cent  I think that would alleviate a lot of the probably incorrect perception. I don't know what the percentage is."
 
"I think it would alleviate a lot of the concern and satisfy the community."
 
Mayor Provenzano then asked for clarification on what the word 'related' meant in the resolution.
 
"Are in-laws related? Are spouses related? Are first cousins related?" he asked.
 
Shoemaker replied that 'related' would be whatever it's defined to be in existing city policy regulating hiring of related employees
 
Cornering the Cochs
 
"I presume they have a staff directory," the councillor said.
 
But the mayor wasn't sure a directory would help much in determining which employees are related, citing the two Provezanos and two Coccimiglios on the municipal payroll.
 
"So the whole community knows that, I am not related to the Provenzanos at the fire department," the mayor said.
 
"I think most people presume that the Provenzanos in the community are related. Not true. There's multiple Provenzano families and we're not related."
 
"Carlo and Marcel and myself aren't related to each other. How would staff determine that by looking at the directory? Staff would have to actually go through some kind of interview process," the mayor said.
 
Shoemaker responded that the city already has a policy on hiring family members, so it must have some way of determining whether someone being hired is a family member of another employee.
 
"I don't think asking if you're related to someone is against the Human RIghts Code," Shoemaker said. 

'People sleeping together and so on and so forth'

The mayor wasn't buying it.

"Staff would have to take all the employees in the city and figure out a system where retroactively they can go through those employees and determine who has relations with another employee. And that's what you want staff to do?" Provenzano asked.

At this point, Ward 2 Councillor Susan Myers entered the fray.
 
"There are many close relationships  people sleeping together and so on and so forth in a relationship that has nothing to do with them being related from a legal point of view. If this is about hiring people who for some reason or other ought not to be hired, I'm really struggling with this. I can't understand," Myers said.
 
Myers wanted to hear from Peter Niro, the city's commissioner of human resources.
 
"The way it's presented presents a challenge," Niro told her.
 
Sanguinity
 
"While technically it's not a violation of human rights, in essence the methodology required to determine the sanguinity of our employees would result in something that quite frankly we couldn't possibly rely on as valid data."
 
"Secondly, there is no motion or force where I could instruct employees if I were directed to ask them to volunteer a response."
 
"To my knowledge, we've never hired anyone unqualified, at least in the 15 years that I've been around. Certainly there's no active campaigning one way or another when it comes to recruiting," Niro said.

Niro said that current hiring policy prohibits specified members of a family from reporting to another family member.

He remembers three occasions over the past 15 years in which the policy was implemented to prevent such situations.

Councillor Grandinetti said when he drafted the resolution he was mostly thinking of spouses and children. "I can name more than a handful of people right now that have a spouse, a child working here. I'm going back a few years ago that someone was given a job that wasn't qualified for the job."

Paul Christian

Ward 1 Councillor Paul Christian had another concern: 
 
"Even though somebody's related doesn't mean they're not qualified for the job. As a matter of fact, some people that get the job are very qualified and they happen to be related, so we're painting with a broad brush here. I'm uncomfortable with it," Christian said.
 
Ward 5's Frank Fata said he's seen evidence of nepotism at the Civic Centre.
 
"In the last 10 or 11 years I've had a conversation with a number of people  staff employees  who've seen people come into the employment with the city and telling me the story about how this person got in and he wasn't qualified."
 
"The person that came into the position was an outsider and didn't have the same qualifications and the conclusion that I got from that conversation was that somebody got in because they knew somebody."
 
Millennium of nepotism
 
"Nepotism has been around for a thousand years, so you're talking about something that's been going on forever and will continue, especially in small towns. I'm sure it happens in Toronto and London and Ottawa," Fata said.
 
"It's almost reverse nepotism," countered Councillor Butland.
 
Mayor Provenzano said he couldn't see how the Grandinetti/Shoemaker resolution could possibly achieve its intended purpose.  
 
"To me, the data it produces isn't transparent at all, doesn't tell a story," the mayor said.
 
But Provenzano said he's still open to suggestions for improving city hiring policy.
 
"This corporation should have merit-based hiring practices.... If you see an issue with our policies as they currently stand, as a governance body if you want to look at policies and you want to work on those policies, I will support you one hundred per cent. In my three years in this office, there's nothing I have harped on more than merit-based hiring," the mayor said.
 
Only three councillors voted in favour of the Grandinetti/Shoemaker resolution.
 
Here's how your councillors voted:
  • Mayor - Christian Provenzano - against
  • Ward 1 - Steve Butland - against
  • Ward 1 - Paul Christian - against
  • Ward 2 - Susan Myers - against
  • Ward 2 - Sandra Hollingsworth - against
  • Ward 3 - Matthew Shoemaker - for
  • Ward 3 - Judy Hupponen - against
  • Ward 4 - Rick Niro - against
  • Ward 4 - Lou Turco - against
  • Ward 5 - Marchy Bruni - against
  • Ward 5 - Frank Fata - for
  • Ward 6 - Joe Krmpotich - against
  • Ward 6 - Ozzie Grandinetti - for

 

 

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David Helwig

About the Author: David Helwig

David Helwig's journalism career spans seven decades beginning in the 1960s. His work has been recognized with national and international awards.
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