Why good governance requires more than making the right decision
When I was in high school, somewhere around Grade 10, we were introduced to algebra. Like most students, I remember wondering why we needed to learn all those formulas and equations, but every Friday our mathematics teacher would give us a quiz to see how well we understood what we had been taught.
My best friend Lance sat beside me in class. We would both work through the same questions, trying to arrive at the correct answers. Lance approached the problems methodically, writing out the equations, calculations, and intermediate steps until he reached his final answer. I approached the problems somewhat differently. I relied heavily on reason, logic, and my ability to recognize patterns. Often, I could see the answer without feeling the need to write down every step along the way.
At the end of the class, we would hand in our papers. When the teacher returned the marked quizzes, something rather peculiar kept happening. Lance would receive an A, while I would receive a C, even though we had both arrived at exactly the same answers.
After this happened several times, I finally asked the teacher why Lance was receiving an A while I was getting a C.
His explanation was simple.
“Lance got the right answer, but he also showed me how he arrived at that answer. He demonstrated his understanding of the problem, the formulas he used, and the calculations that brought him to the correct result. You simply wrote down the answer and handed it in.”
At the time, I wasn’t particularly impressed with that explanation. After all, if the answer was correct, what difference did it make how I arrived at it?
It took me a good many years to appreciate what that teacher was actually teaching us.
The answer is only part of the equation. The process by which we arrive at the answer is equally important.
And that brings me to municipal government.
When Council Gets the Right Answer
Over the years, I have watched municipal councils debate issues, approve expenditures, adopt bylaws, reject proposals, and make decisions that affect thousands of residents. Some of those decisions have been excellent. Others have been questionable, and some have been downright disastrous.
But there is another category of decision that interests me even more. These are decisions that may actually be correct, reasonable, and entirely justified, but which leave the public wondering how council arrived at them.
Think about that for a moment.
A municipal council might spend months examining a problem, consulting professional staff, reviewing technical reports, considering legal advice, and weighing the financial implications of several possible solutions. After all that work, council reaches what may well be the best possible decision.
But what does the public see?
Often, all residents see is a motion, a vote, and an announcement that council has made its decision.
The public receives the answer, but not necessarily the reasoning that produced it.
And when residents cannot follow the reasoning, they begin to fill in the blanks themselves. Some suspect political favoritism. Others assume incompetence, hidden agendas, or decisions made behind closed doors. Social media fills with accusations, speculation, and competing explanations, many of which have little connection to what actually happened.
The tragedy is that council may have made the correct decision in the first place.
It simply failed to show its work.
The Difference Between Authority and Accountability
Municipal councils have the legal authority to make decisions within their jurisdiction. That authority comes from provincial legislation and the democratic mandate granted by the electorate.
But legal authority and public accountability are not the same thing.
Authority gives council the power to make a decision. Accountability requires council to demonstrate that the decision was reached through a fair, rational, lawful, and properly informed process.
A council should be able to explain what problem it was trying to solve, what evidence it considered, what alternatives were examined, what criteria were applied, and why the chosen course of action was preferable to the available alternatives.
That does not mean every resident must agree with the outcome. Nor does it mean that every confidential legal opinion or protected personnel matter must be made public.
It means that the public should be able to understand the reasoning behind a decision without having to conduct its own investigation.
In other words, council should be able to show its work.
The Principle of Repensity
This is precisely the problem I have been attempting to address through the governance framework I call Repensity.
Repensity is built around the proposition that sound governance requires more than good intentions, competent officials, and occasional public consultation. It requires structured procedures that make the reasoning behind public decisions visible, understandable, and capable of being examined.
Instead of asking residents to simply trust that council has made the right decision, we should establish mechanisms through which the decision-making process can be demonstrated.
What was the problem? What evidence was considered? What assumptions were made? Were alternative solutions examined? Were potential conflicts identified? What were the financial implications? What standards were used to determine the preferred outcome?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are the municipal equivalent of showing the calculations in an algebra examination.
And the important point is that such a framework should protect council just as much as it protects the public.
When the reasoning is properly documented, council members are less vulnerable to unfounded accusations, residents have fewer reasons to speculate about hidden motives, and disagreements can focus on the evidence rather than personalities.
A transparent decision-making framework does not guarantee that every decision will be correct. What it does is make the process sufficiently visible that errors can be identified, assumptions challenged, and decisions improved.
That is how public confidence is earned.
A Lesson for the Next Four Years
Summerland has just completed another municipal election. Some residents are pleased with the results, while others are disappointed. That is the nature of democracy, and it is unlikely to change.
But elections only determine who occupies the chairs around the council table. They do not, by themselves, determine the quality of governance that follows.
The real opportunity for our newly elected council is not simply to make better decisions. It is to establish a better method of making decisions, one that residents can understand and evaluate regardless of whether they agree with the final outcome.
Imagine a council where significant decisions are accompanied by a clear explanation of the problem, the evidence, the alternatives, and the reasoning behind the final vote. Imagine residents being able to examine that information without filing repeated information requests, attending endless meetings, or trying to reconstruct events from fragments of public records.
Imagine how much unnecessary conflict could be avoided if the public could see not only what council decided, but why.
That is the direction I believe municipal governance must take, and it is the purpose behind the Repensity framework.
I sometimes think back to that mathematics classroom and my friend Lance. We both understood enough to arrive at the correct answer, but Lance understood something about the assignment that I had overlooked.
The teacher wasn’t simply marking our answers. He was evaluating our ability to demonstrate the reasoning that produced them.
Municipal government should be held to a similar standard.
Getting the right answer may be enough to pass a motion. Showing how you arrived at that answer is what earns public confidence.
And if our municipal councils want an A from the citizens they represent, they must learn to show their work.