FILE PHOTO - Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson (right) and Kamloops councillor Katie Neustaeter (left) at a March 28, 2023, council meeting.

(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

A Kamloops city councillor said a newly released investigation report clears her name after the mayor blamed her for his tarnished reputation.

Councillor Katie Neustaeter filed a complaint shortly after Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson sued her for defamation, spurring an investigation that ran a parallel path to the lawsuit itself.

It was the first council code of conduct investigation and was completed more than a year ago, but the mayor's attempts to block its release stalled it for months.

"I was grateful to see my name cleared in there and it was made incredibly clear that the mayor misled people," Neustaeter said.

It was one of the least costly conduct investigations over the past two years at $8,904 and began with a complaint last July.

Hamer-Jackson's defamation case was filed a month earlier and he went on to tell various media outlets that a joint council statement that spring led to accusations that he is a "pervert." It was Neustaeter who read the statement at a March 2023 news conference and within it, the claim Hamer-Jackson had breached "personal and professional boundaries" was the offending phrase, according to the mayor's lawsuit.

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"I was just stunned when those accusations came out," Neustaeter said. "I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had nothing to do with those incidents."

The investigation saw multiple councillors and the mayor interviewed, along with an anonymous witness. Each of them agreed that no suggestion of sexual impropriety was intended in the March statement.

The question of what boundaries were breached varies by councillor, but for Neustaeter's part it was related to Hamer-Jackson's contact with her father. It was family-related for two others as well, according to the report. For councillor Bill Sarai it was likely the mayor's attempts to get his son, a bylaw officer, a job in the fire department, recently detailed in an affidavit he filed in the ongoing defamation case against Neustaeter.

Neustaeter told the investigator Hamer-Jackson was using her father as leverage in an effort to get support for ousting a top-level City administrators, a similar account Sarai details in court documents.

The investigator found Hamer-Jackson misled the public when at least two incidents he brought to reporters were published. One was the claim that someone he didn't know drove passed him and called him a "pervert." The other was regarding a confrontation at a bar where a local developer told the mayor to "keep (his) hands off" the developer's wife.

The mayor "repeatedly" refused to give the investigator more information about his claims, particularly about the person in the passing vehicle, according to the report. Without providing anything more and giving more than one reason for his refusal, he was found to not be credible.

Whether the incident with the passing driver actually happened isn't clear, nor is it addressed at length.

What the mayor didn't do when speaking about either incident is specifically say how the incidents were connected to the joint statement and his alleged breaches of "boundaries."

"No one referenced me in any way. He jumped to conclusions on his own," Neustaeter said.

Whether he has more evidence to back up the connection isn't clear, but it's expected he'll attempt to bring such evidence to the court as the defamation case proceeds. Neustaeter, however, said there is no evidence to connect her with reasons why he might have been accused of some sort of sexual misconduct.

"Assumptions and accusations are not the same as facts and information," she said.

The code of conduct investigation was not only the first since the bylaw came into effect, it was also the first to end with serious repercussions for the mayor.

The first attempt at a resolution was to have the mayor sign an apology letter, pre-written in February and directed to Neustaeter. It acknowledges the investigator's findings that he breached the code of conduct and that the statement wasn't connected to any accusations that Hamer-Jackson is a "pervert."

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"You have expressed that my conduct has resulted in considerable impacts on you and your family, your reputation, the public's perception of your intentions and our working relationship. You have advised that this resulted in concerning interactions between you and members of the community who believed my words to be true," the letter read. "I admit that my actions and assumptions were wrong, and I apologize without reservations for you having experienced these negative impacts as a result of my behaviour."

It ends with a blank space where his signature would go and a note that it falls under the province's Apology Act, a law that stipulates apologies aren't admissible in court as evidence of fault. The letter hasn't been seen publicly, but Hamer-Jackson provided a copy to iNFOnews.ca.

Months after he was presented with the letter, he was hit with his first 10 per cent salary cut due to his refusal to sign it.

In March, he intervened in the city's efforts to release the report. iNFOnews.ca was notified that a "third-party" didn't want the report released, whether in part or in its entirety isn't clear. Code of conduct reports are generally available on request when complete, but the intervention had the matter escalated to a Freedom of Information request.

The BC Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner got involved and mediation wasn't possible, but the mayor, who revealed himself to be the intervenor, later relented. What led to his change of heart isn't clear, but he later said he wanted it to be released.

Also unclear is how it will affect his defamation case, but it's directly connected to his rationale for the lawsuit against Neustaeter and casts doubt over whether the March 2023 news conference could have led to any accusations that he is a pervert.

"I filed this code of conduct complaint to make it perfectly clear that I had nothing to do with those incidents, and I think those merits stand on their own," Neustaeter said when asked how it will affect her defence against the mayor's defamation claim.

In the week before the report's release, Hamer-Jackson's lawyer Daniel Coles backed out of representing the mayor on the Neustaeter file. Hamer-Jackson said they haven't cut ties entirely, suggesting that he's still working on another defamation suit for now. Coles has now ceased representing the mayor on all code of conduct complaints and more recently the Neustaeter suit, which was the case that prompted the mayor to retain Coles in the first place.

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The mayor told iNFOnews.ca it was due to costs, which isn't new as he has complained of his mounting legal bills in the past. Separately he even faces a court petition where his past lawyer is seeking unpaid fees.

Coles didn't respond to a request for comment about no longer representing Hamer-Jackson on the Neustaeter matter.

Neustaeter made the complaint in July, the month after Hamer-Jackson filed the defamation case. The mayor contends it shouldn't have gone through at all because of the ongoing civil case. He cites the city's own bylaw that says an investigator "may" dismiss a complaint if it is already handled in another theatre, BC Supreme Court in this case.

To what extent that was considered isn't clear, but the investigator wasn't lost on the fact there was an ongoing lawsuit as it was specifically what led to Neustaeter's complaint in the first place.

The pair are set to face each other in court next month as Neustaeter attempts to have the defamation suit deemed baseless and tossed.

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