Another peek at the City Hall communications apparatus | Ottawa ...

On Dec. 5, the city put on its big show to announced that Rideau Transit Group was its preferred bidder on the contract to design, build, finance and maintain the planned light-rail system. The show was in the morning but the voluminous report explaining the decision and its consequences didn?t come out till late in the day, so we were doing more detailed follow-up stories on Dec. 6.

Including this one, which looked at the part of the contract that dealt with long-term maintenance of the system. That was always treated separately from the $2.1-billion construction cost, but the report that came out on the 5th put a big number on it: about $2 billion more over the life of the contract. When I noticed that as I read the report, I had some questions, and I asked to speak to Mona Monkman, the deputy city treasurer who?s been assigned to the LRT project as its top finance official.

City media-relations officer Jocelyne Turner subsequently asked me to put a little meat on the bones of that request ? what, particularly, did I want to talk about?

Will need a bit more of a sense as to what you are looking for.? Don?t need your specific questions, but it would be helpful if I had a sense of what you are looking for.

This request is fair enough. Mona Monkman is very expert, but the LRT project is enormous and it?s understandable that she?d want to know roughly what I was after so she could background herself and make sure she had facts at her fingertips.

I responded:

Most basically, of course, I want to be sure I?m reading the chart on page 63 of the main report properly. It looks like the contract with RTG would include $2 billion in payments (including inflation over 30 years) that aren?t reckoned in the $2.1-billion price tag we?ve heard so much about.

Which leads to questions like: How does this compare to having the city take care of maintenance, as it does with the Transitway? Has the city run those numbers?

I don?t remember that even rough figures were put on the long-term maintenance and lifecycle costs at previous stages of consideration, though I?m open to being corrected on that. If I?m right, though, and this is the first time we?re seeing them, then why is that?

Why, in short, is this the best deal for taxpayers?

I?m not looking to do a story with a headline like, ?LRT COSTS NEARLY DOUBLE AT LAST MOMENT,? but I?ll need someone to explain the money plan in plain English.

David

What happened after that was a gong show. I?d asked separate questions about the $300 million in private financing the RTG consortium is supposed to put up, which it?s borrowing more expensively than the city could, and for some more details about the construction plans. That produced a set of coherent answers, delivered in writing, from the whole project?s boss John Jensen, which touched on the maintenance aspect of the deal because it?s bound up in certain ways with the private financing.

Since that was relevant and partly answered my questions, I stuck that material in the story, along with a note that my request to interview Mona Monkman hadn?t been answered by my deadline, which was the case. I actually thought Jensen had been deputed to answer the whole batch and didn?t think anything much more of it.

It turns out that a pretty massive effort was going on behind the scenes, which led to a set of written answers ostensibly from Monkman, sent to me by email well after I?d filed the story. I know about this because the weird two-track answers and lateness and stilted language in Monkman?s response ? which is nothing like what she is in person, which is a normal human being with some very specialized knowledge and expertise ? prompted me to file an access-to-information request. I wanted to find out what on earth was going on while I waited for what I thought was going to be a phone call where the deputy city treasurer and I could have a back-and-forth and by the end I?d really be confident I understood what was going on and would be able to write a story explaining it to you.

Here it is, in PDF form, all 177 pages of it:?Media inquiries about the LRT

(There?s some bycatch involving the other questions I had on the go, too. Because of the way I structured the request, I caught a short exchange involving Ashley Burke of the CBC as well. There?s nothing of consequence in it, but sorry, Ashley, I was trying to read public officials? emails, not yours.)

The 177 pages are extremely repetitive, mostly taken up with drafts and redrafts of the Monkman answers. You can see what a committee put them together. Monkman got final sign-off, which is understandable since it was going out with only her name attached to it, but the group involved her, senior aides to city manager Kent Kirkpatrick (Steve Box and Robyn Guest), the senior aide to deputy city manager Nancy Schepers (Chris Swail), Simon Dupuis of the rail office, PR types Turner and Michael FitzPatrick, and communications strategist Patrick Dare. Who, full disclosure, used to work at the?Citizen?and was my first editor here, and whose editor I was for a while before he quit the?Citizen?and went to work for the city. I miss his directness, I might as well tell you.

When you see in a story that so-and-so answered a question through a city spokesperson, then, it probably means something like that went on.

Turner, who handled the original request, noted quite firmly that I asked for an interview, and there?s talk at some point of putting a small group of the city?s experts up, but the idea eventually passes from this earth without anybody being seen to kill it, at least in writing.

Financing the LRT is the kind of issue where an interview is really useful. It?s complicated and precise and being able to go over things again and follow up is often key to understanding. It?s one thing if I?m asking, say, how many salters the city has out to fight a bout of freezing rain. In this case, written responses are better than nothing, but they?re still not that great. There?s a reason why I specifically asked for that interview ? a request that I didn?t know was being rejected till I got those written answers ? based on the general questions I?d supplied.

Here?s a lesson for anyone who deals with reporters.?When a reporter asks for an interview, and you ask for general questions to guide the interview subject?s preparation, do not treat those questions as if they?re everything the reporter wants to know.

I also see that talking to me about this is considered ?High risk.? I guess. I?m not sure that it turned out to be higher risk than?not talking to me.

Source: http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2013/01/29/another-peek-at-the-city-hall-communications-apparatus/

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