The city of Laval will not pay the legal fees when its former mayor and councillors appear before the Charbonneau Commission.
Quebec's Municipal Commission made the decision this week after the trustees now in charge of all spending in Laval asked for the board's input.
In November 2012, Laval's city council voted to create a $500,000 legal fee budget for all elected officials who were summoned before the inquiry into corruption.
Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt stepped down soon afterwards, and has since been charged with gangsterism and running a decades-long corruption kickback scheme.
Vaillancourt had presented the city of Laval with an $84,000 bill for legal fees after he retained lawyers Jean-Claude Hébert and Nadine Touma.
In its decision the Municipal Commission ruled the actions coming under question at the Charbonneau Commission do not pertain to work done by Vaillancourt or councillors in their roles as elected officials.
The commission wrote that, “the fees are not in any way be linked to Vaillancourt’s performance of his duties as mayor."
Vaillancourt served as Laval mayor from 1989 to 2012 under the P.R.O. Party banner. His party routinely won all, or nearly all of the seats in many elections after his arrival but he was arrested in May on a series of corruption-related charges, including gangsterism.
