"You've got a council that's been profligate, wasteful,
irresponsible and certainly immoral and possibly illegal," Wells told reporters outside Monday night's council meeting. It's along the lines of Well's comments last September.
There's only one reason O'Keefe is pissed: Wells is right.
And for the first time in a long while someone is calling out the arrogant, secretive O'Keefe on the shit-show he's been running in the city for the past five or six years.
Earlier this year, for example, O'Keefe orchestrated a scam that involved paying off five senior managers to vacate their offices so O'Keefe and his cronies could fill the positions with their hand-picked lackies. The scam was that O'Keefe and his political pals claimed people were taking early retirement and that the whole thing would save money. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
What's most interesting about Wells' accusations is that he claims O'Keefe and da b'ys have been voting increases for senior managers at private meetings and not reporting them publicly as required by the city's freedom of information by-law. Wells wrote the by-law apparently. Well, the secret raises accusation fits rather neatly with the "early retirement" scam that's already been out there, albeit in a misleading way from official city sources.
The other interesting thing is that O'Keefe didn't actually address any of Wells' accusations. In a fairly predictable fashion, O'Keefe just attacked Wells personally, calling him a bully. O'Keefe called Wells' remarks an "ill-informed and inaccurate political rant" and a "political rant" as well as "totally out of line" for Wells as chair of the public utilities board.
It's that whiny diatribe aimed at Wells' personally - instead of a simple factual rebuttal - that makes it seem pretty obvious that Wells is on the right track. Even if we didn't know about the earlier deception by O'Keefe and others about senior managers, we'd be highly suspicious just by the way Doc bathed everyone in a 10 metre radius of his scrum with spittle and bile.
Then there was the scam called last year's budget. O'Keefe and his political associates jacked up taxes, slashed public services, and funneled additional cash for capital works in the guise of providing some local economic stimulus. This year - an election year - they plan to drop taxes in what is essentially a rather transparent ploy to buy votes. That's the sort of political dishonesty that remains O'Keefe's track record of late.
Well, either fundamental dishonesty or some sort of gross incompetence.
Take your pick.
The thing is that when looking at these accusations you have to weigh Wells' comments against O'Keefe's record and his behaviour. You don't have to like Andy Wells on any level to know that O'Keefe lacks credibility.
-srbp-