Human Resources: Kangaroo court - Denial, cover-up and gross incompetence

Fowke incompetent in managing Human Resources division: Baronette report revealed

Fowke: Incompetence and Negligence

Kevin Fowke, Director of Human Resources and Organizational Development, is incompetent in managing the human resources division, a Baronette report revealed. Baronette was appointed to investigate a complaint against Nick Benkovich, director of water and wastewater services.  The complaint was alleged mainly towards Benkovich for utilizing tax dollars to exercise his authoritarian style techniques to manage issues in the division.

According to the leaked confidential report submitted by Vicki Baronette, Human Resources coordinator of the water and wastewater division, supervisors are heavily abusing the authority under the direct supervision of Benkovich. Numerous workplace issues have surfaced and have been brought forward to the divisional director’s attention. According to the report, it seems as though Benkovich advised his supervisors to utilize excessive authority to suppress the issues within the division. This is part of a strategy Benkovich may have utilized to hide his incompetence and his participation in defrauding public funds.  

The Baronette report noted that Benkovich’s supervisors labelled divisional employees as “pathological liars” (See the report). Benkovich, however, issued three days work suspension notice for one of the divisional employees calling his supervisor as a “liar” (See Benkovich disciplinary letter). Fowke uses kangaroo court tactics to blame the victim and cover-up his own gross incompetence.

This harassing and vexatious conduct even continued against water and wastewater employees, Fowke was not able to address one single issue in an expedite and reasonable manner. Instead of finding solutions to workplace labour issues, Fowke continually provided material support to Benkovich, allowing him to continue his abusive and disrespectful behaviour against employees. Furthermore, Fowke spent thousands of tax dollars hiring private lawyers against his own employees to cover-up the activities and wrongdoings of Benkovich.  Fowke’s incompetence is highlighted in all areas including labour relations issues within the city. This is clearly evident in the sheer amount of tax dollars spent on labour and employment matters.

Fowke spent over $200,000 tax dollars on Human Rights proceedings and compensation while attempting to cover-up Benkovich’s misconduct. Many simple labour issues did not settle in the early stages through a grievance procedure. Instead, they were directly forwarded to Mediation/ arbitration.

In addition, Fowke hired private lawyers from a Toronto legal firm and in this way, a large sum of tax dollars were scammed. It was reported that over $400,000 were spent on private lawyers in 2014. This was clearly unnecessary as the City also pays over 1.3 million dollars to have four (4)  solicitors and 11 support staff in the legal services department. Fowke never utilized internal resources and tax dollars were wasted by paying the lawyers from Toronto. Fowke’s chosen Toronto-based legal firm benefited from his scam and received over a million tax dollars paid in legal fees.  

The duo, Fowke and Benkovich, are involved in scamming public funds and both of them should be brought before justice. Fowke’s gross incompetence is now exposed and as such, Fowke must step down immediately.

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Editorial
Released on February 19, 2015 at 11:30 AM EDT

The article initially published on Amfiteatru Economic, (14): 6, 665-679 . Brief review and Excerpts from the article as follows.

Corruption and Bureaucracy in Public Services

The theory that we shall seek to elaborate here puts considerable emphasis on the importance of big-time corruption in reducing funding for service delivery, the value of bureaucracy as a means of delivering public services, and the level of politicization of the public bureaucracy. This paper seeks to fill a gap in the current literature by examining different aspects of the benefits of openness and transparency in tackling corruption in the public sector, the bureaucratization of service tasks, and the failure of bureaucratic systems in delivering public services. In sum, the results of the current paper provide useful insights on the context and causes of corruption, incentives to assure efficiency within the public bureaucracy, and the organizational limits of public bureaucracy.

Clearly, the scientific findings synthesized herein have important implications for the propensity of the public employee to engage in corrupt behavior, representativeness of public bureaucracies, and the actual organization and practice of public bureaucracies. Corruption reflects an underlying institutional framework. The form of political institutions can affect the level of corruption.

Institutions influence the degree of political control of public bureaucrats. Elected officials and bureaucrats are beneficiaries of rent-seeking activities. Bureaus have substantial policy-implementing authority. The pervasiveness of corruption in a country is measured by an indicator that captures bureaucratic corruption. The bureaucratic control strategies practiced by top-level leaders can help the middle-level players pass blame among themselves, whereas public bureaucrats and private interests can often benefit from ambiguous delegation arrangements. Researchers examine the degree to which bureaucratic attitudes comport with public preferences: representative bureaucracies share preferences with the public, and take actions to translate these preferences into policy decisions. The bureaucratic officials and the public share basic underlying opinions about the appropriate level of environmental regulation (bureaucrats and the public have different understandings of the forces driving economic competition). Researchers  think that representative bureaucracy theory and principal-agent theory are useful for thinking about how well bureaucracies represent the general public, and representative bureaucrats are those that share similar attitudes as the public: the public is limited in its ability to directly monitor and sanction bureaucratic behaviour, bureaucrats and the public share similar underlying attitudes on environmental regulation, bureaucrats may be more informed about the specifics of policy, whereas the state bureaucratic officials have a different perception of economic competition than expressed by the public.

What matters for the present discussion is that a corrupt agreement requires that each partner must equally value the losses resulting from denunciation. Corruption often takes place as a by-product of other relationships. Researchers further state that under certain conditions penalties imposed on individuals can help secure corrupt agreements. The willingness to take bribes brings about disadvantages to the corrupt actors themselves. Corrupt agreements usually cannot be legally enforced. Partners in a corrupt relationship often renege after having obtained a bribe, or ask for a second payment. Unpredictable size of bribes and level of opportunism significantly impact on absence of corruption. Fighting corruption and restoring investors’ confidence go hand in hand. The predictability of corruption causes further corruption. A certain level of trust is therefore a basic prerequisite to corruption. Researchers reason  that corrupt deals are sealed in a framework of existing legal relationships. A mixture of transparency and obfuscation may be fruitfully employed to minimize corruption. A visible commitment to anticorruption may drive down the solicitation of bribes.

The overall results provide strong evidence for relationships within public bureaucratic structures, the nature and limitations of public bureaucracy, the decision-making process within public bureaucracies, and the consequences of corrupt behavior. As a result of these earlier research findings, this paper sought to determine the effectiveness of anti-corruption initiatives, incentives to assure efficiency within the public bureaucracy, and the representativeness of bureaucrats of the public. Although researchers have discovered some important findings regarding the role of political institutions in curbing or increasing corruption, the relationship between bureaucracies and the public, and the tendency to politicize the public bureaucracies of democratic societies, there is still a great deal that is unknown and that requires further empirical inquiry.

Editor
WikiLeaks Sudbury
February 19, 2015

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Corruption and Bureaucracy in Public Services