What are they trying to hide? That’s the first question Torontonians should ask when the public is stonewalled by city officials who refuse to disclose documents showing how councillors do their taxpayer-funded job.

The second question is: Why does the law let them get away with it?

Despite serving in Canada’s sixth-largest government, collecting a salary of more than $100,000 and regularly voting on matters that affect every Toronto resident, councillors are legally allowed to keep secret their work emails, documents sent from lobbyists and developers, schedules, consultations and other communications.

They are exempt from the freedom of information process. And that’s a slap to anyone interested in learning the truth about how decisions are made in Canada’s largest city.

As the Star’s Robyn Doolittle reports, the issue came to a head when this newspaper asked for records concerning Councillor Doug Ford’s effort to bring a National Football League team to Toronto. It’s fair to wonder what offers were made, what meetings were held, and what the public interest was in Ford’s pursuit of that goal. But the Star’s request, made a year and a half ago, was denied by city bureaucrats.

An appeal was filed in July 2011 and opposed by Ford and the City of Toronto on grounds that councillors aren’t municipal employees. Therefore, according to the side favouring secrecy, their records are personal. The public has no right to see them. Unfortunately that argument carried the day, with an adjudicator ruling that the requested documents needn’t be turned over.

Advocates of open and accountable government have every right to be disappointed with this ruling. It confirms a gap in the existing law.

What Ford and other supporters of the status quo fail to acknowledge is that the information they’re covering up isn’t theirs to hide. The records of public business stored in their city hall computers, municipally-issued cell phones, office desk drawers and file cabinets rightfully belong to the people. Citizens deserve to know what their elected representatives are doing, and that means having a right to examine these documents.

It might make some city councillors uncomfortable, but public disclosure is healthy. It keeps them honest. Shady backroom deals, cronyism and special favours wither in the bright light of exposure. Taxpayers’ best protection against having their interests sold out is to have their government operate with as much transparency as possible. This constitutes true “respect for the taxpayer.”

But that level of openness can’t happen as long as city councillors’ records pertaining to public business are deemed their personal property — effectively shielding everything from prying eyes.

It’s up to Queen’s Park to act. The province’s access to information law, which covers municipalities, needs a re-write to close the loophole exempting city councilors. The veil of secrecy needs to be lifted.

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