A top official in Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard)’s office urged at least one Toronto Public Library board member to vote for new member Ron Carinci, a businessman who knows Tory, to become board chair.

Board member and past chair Councillor Paul Ainslie (open Paul Ainslie's policard), who also sits on Tory’s executive committee, told the Star that Vic Gupta, Tory’s principal secretary, strongly suggested he support Carinci’s candidacy.

“The mayor’s principal secretary told me about a week before (the February vote) that he thought Ron Carinci would be a great library board chair.

“He urged me to vote for Ron Carinci, who is new on the board. I said I would think about it.”

Gupta “mentioned that the library is in labour negotiations next year and (Carinci) had experience at labour negotiations, and that he could bring that to the table.”

In 2012, libraries across the city shut down for 10 days after 2,300 workers rejected the city’s contract offer and went on strike while Ainslie was chair.

On Feb. 17, Ainslie and other members at a library board meeting unanimously made Carinci, chief operating officer at development firm Urbacon, chair, after two veteran members reconsidered seeking the post.

Gupta referred the Star’s questions to Amanda Galbraith, Tory’s director of communications. In a statement, she said Tory has “no personal or business relationship with Mr. Carinci,” and that Carinci “applied and went through the process like every other candidate.

“He was elected chair by his fellow library board members and we have every expectation that he will do an excellent job in that role. Any suggestion that the Mayor's Office improperly influenced this process is false.”

In an interview last month, Carinci told the Star: “I do know John Tory,” but applied to join the library board before Tory was mayor, and spoke to “board members and other staff” — not Tory — about the appointment.

He noted that before going into development he was a corporate and commercial lawyer who has served on the board of the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jays Care Foundation for eight years. Carinci was among the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. board members who resigned en masse in 2013 after Premier Kathleen Wynne fired Paul Godfrey as OLG chairman.

Godfrey was the Blue Jays’ chief executive from 2000 to 2008.

Gupta has twice been a Richmond Hill candidate for the Ontario Provincial Conservatives. Carinci was, according to a 2014 National Post story, a co-chair with Godfrey of the Toronto Leader’s Dinner fundraising event for the Ontario PC party.

Carinci did not respond to later messages asking about Gupta’s lobbying.

In 2012, city ombudsman Fiona Crean released a damning report that said then-mayor Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard)’s office had interfered in the process to appoint citizens to city’s board and agencies, even sending a list of preferred candidates to some city councillors on the selection committee.

Council voted to tighten the rules, but “there are no rules that address the Mayor’s involvement in the selection of chairs of the Library Board,” John Elvidge, director of secretariat in the city clerk’s office, said in an email.

“The Mayor’s involvement is neither expressly permitted or prohibited and there are no other guidelines of which I am aware.”

Ainslie said he has no problem with the mayor’s office letting its wishes be known, as long as there is “no undue influence brought.” Also, he added, it should be done openly, with overtures to every board member, which was not done in this case.

His city council and library board colleague Sarah Doucette (open Sarah Doucette's policard) told the Star she had planned to run for chair but reconsidered after vice-chair Ross Parry, a reappointed citizen member, said he was thinking of running.

Doucette said the mayor’s office should stay out of the chair selection.

“I don't mind if I'm chair or not; I can still do my work, but I'm really disappointed with how it happened,” Doucette said. “I thought we were beyond this stuff.”

Parry, who was vice-chair at the end of last term, said in thinking it over on the Family Day weekend before the vote he decided not to seek the chairmanship because of his professional and volunteer time commitments.

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Parry said he called Gupta to ask if anyone else was interested in the post and Gupta told him Carinci was, but did not encourage him to vote for Carinci.

“I’m fine with the way it came out in the end,” Parry said. The chairmanship “just wasn’t in the cards for me in terms of time commitment.

“Ron had a lot of background on governance; I would have voted for him,” Parry said, if burst pipes had not made him miss the Feb. 17 board meeting.

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