Before a three-person HR committee appointed to recommend a CAO for the soon-to-be-amalgamated town of Tantramar could complete their work, the member representing Sackville resigned over concerns that the process was unfair and rushed. Despite that resignation, consultant Chad Peters passed along a recommendation to hire Dorchester’s Jennifer Borne for the top municipal job.
This week, Sackville mayor Shawn Mesheau wrote to Peters’ boss, Minister Daniel Allain, calling for a review of what he called the “fundamentally flawed” hiring process, and a spokesperson for Allain’s department says a meeting will be scheduled.
‘It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t reasonable’: Andrew Black on why he resigned from committee to hire a new CAO
Sackville Deputy Mayor Andrew Black says that in mid-June, when it became apparent to him that his original misgivings about the CAO hiring process were well-founded, he decided he had to resign. “I felt that it was an unfair process,” says Black. “I felt that it was fairly biased. It wasn’t reasonable, which is, you know, terminology that has been used by the minister and his department for this process, that it would be ‘fair and reasonable’, and it was not,” says Black. “And so I left.”
Black’s resignation left the committee with two members, Dorchester Deputy Mayor Robert Corkerton and Sackville local service district resident Chris Milner, who remained on the committee for the rest of the process and recommended that Dorchester CAO Jennifer Borne take the top job in the new municipality. Only two candidates were in the running for the job, Sackville CAO Jamie Burke, and Borne.
Anne Mooers, communications director for the department of local government, says that the hiring process for Tantramar CAO is complete, but would not identify the new CAO. But on July 6, the consultant hired by the province to oversee the amalgamation of Tantramar, Chad Peters, wrote to the Sackville mayor and other reps saying that Allain had accepted the HR committee’s recommendation and would appoint Jennifer Borne as CAO of Tantramar.
At the time of Black’s resignation on June 15, interviews and scoring had been completed, according to Mooers. “There wasn’t a need for a new appointee as the remainder of the process was about ensuring due diligence, which was undertaken by a third-party human resources firm,” wrote Mooers via email. Mooers asserts that the decision to hire Borne was made before Black resigned. Black doesn’t contest this, but says there were still steps in the process to take place after he left.
The human resources firm hired to assist with the hiring is Jennifer Murray Consulting based in Moncton, though it’s not clear what exactly the firm did. Black says he cannot not share details of the experience on the HR committee, because he signed a confidentiality agreement when he joined, which prevents him from discussing the internal workings.
Black did confirm that he participated in interviews and scoring right up to and including June 15, but says he did not sign off on any resulting paperwork or recommendation. He also says that efforts were made to find a replacement for him after his resignation, with a request from Chad Peters passed along by Mayor Shawn Mesheau to all of council.
Mooers says that Peters reached out looking for someone to replace Black on the elected officials advisory committee, but not the HR committee, as Black had resigned from both.
Representation on HR committee ‘not good enough’
Black first complained about the process to hire CAOs for amalgamated municipalities shortly after hearing the plan as laid out by Minister Allain in a meeting with council on May 6, 2022. A few days after the meeting, Black says he called Chad Peters to register his concerns. “I said, this is wrong. I don’t like it. The possibility of a level of bias in the process is too great,” recalls Black. “This is not something that any elected official or LSD representative on an advisory committee, not just in Sackville, but anywhere across the province… They should not be put in that position.”
Black is referring to the situation across the province for amalgamated municipalities undergoing internal hiring processes, who are forced to consider all and only candidates already working in the municipalities about to be amalgamated. Because of the sometimes close relationship between elected representatives and CAOs, Black points to a problem where hiring committee members already have favourites, in stark contrast to a standard hiring process for a CAO, says Black, where the candidate pool is larger, and a full council is involved.
“When [Sackville CAO] Jamie Burke was hired and we went through a CAO hiring process that was done by an HR firm, it was all of council,” says Black. “It was all elected representatives. There were eight of us around the table doing this process. Whereas in this instance, I would argue that the representation on that hiring subcommittee [of three appointees] was not good enough.”
Black also says the process was rushed compared to previous hirings where there’s been “weeks and weeks” for things to unfold, indicating that the timeline for the process was taking priority over the quality of the process.
Black acknowledges the possible appearance that his resignation could be interpreted as a reaction to his disappointment in the result of the process, rather than the process itself. But he says he was prepared to accept any outcome, if only he felt the process was a fair one.
Black says the hiring committee experience may have been ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ for him when it comes to reconciling his personal integrity and his participation in the province’s local governance reform rollout.
“Throughout this, I’ve been trying to… I’ve been sort of bouncing back and forth feeling I’m terrible for being on the advisory committee and having to make decisions, but wanting to be there because I want to be a part of it. I want to represent Sackville,” he says. “I feel that’s my responsibility.”
“But it’s just been tiresome,” says Black. “And this was really it for me.”
You can hear an interview with Andrew Black, speaking with CHMA after a council meeting on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, here:
Council weighs in, meeting with Minister Daniel Allain to be arranged
This week, about four weeks after Black resigned, councillors voted unanimously to send a letter to Minister Daniel Allain to express their concerns about the hiring process, and ask for an urgent meeting with the Minister.
Mooers says the minister received that letter Thursday, and “a meeting will be arranged with the mayor as per his request.”
In an earlier email, Mooers explained that the minister had not been aware of Black’s resignation.
Mesheau’s letter to Allain does not mention the resignation, but briefly cites “serious concerns” of council over the process leading to the recommendation of Jennifer Borne as future Tantramar CAO. The mayor asks Allain to, “refrain from appointing Ms. Borne until we have had the opportunity to meet with you to express our concerns at this fundamentally flawed process.”
The letter also cites council’s issues with being left in the dark due to HR confidentiality rules (a predicament that followers of the Sackville Fire Department’s recent workplace changes might find familiar.)
“Based on the limited information available to us — due to the lack of transparency of the process due to confidentiality agreements imposed on the members of the HR committee — we can only view the outcome as unreasonable and inconsistent with the expectation set by [Deputy Minister of Local Government Ryan] Donaghy,” reads the letter.
The letter asks to have the entire CAO hiring process, “reviewed by a reputable, independent human resources consulting firm.”
It goes on: “If this process was flawed, this would allow for the matter to be addressed before irrevocable decisions are taken; if the review finds that the process was appropriate and reasonable, it would provide Town Council and the citizens who we represent with confidence in the appointment.”
