All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Transit Defiled

Posted on April 25, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

“If 30 members of council want to sign a petition to call a special meeting to raise taxes on the backs of citizens who can’t afford them, that will be the first campaign poster for the mayor’s 2014 campaign.” Mark Towhey, Chief of Staff, Mayor Ford.

For a bunch of reasons, the 2014 municipal campaign can’t come soon enough for me. But mostly I’m just eager for this angle to play out. Mayor Ford, steadfast in his respect for taxpayers, refuses to so much as even discuss options for transit expansion.

“I promised taxpayers I’d keep their taxes low. I kept their taxes low.”

“You also promised taxpayers subways,” counters a hypothetical opponent. “Subways, subways, subways.”

“City Council refused to let me build a subway. It’s their fault.”

“But you had 3 years [four years by the time the campaign rolls around] to come up with a plan to build subways. Where is it?”

“The private sector. P3s. P3s. The private sector. The private sector. Did I say, ‘P3s’? P3s. The private sector. The people want subways. Subways, subways, subways.”

Maybe Mark Towhey and the rest of the Team Ford brain trust are really, truly salivating at the prospect of running a re-election campaign on the mayor’s bread-and-butter issue of low taxes but the ground has shifted considerably since 2010. This time he won’t just be running against some easily smearable, downtown tax-and-spender. In his determined digging in of his heels and holding his breath until the transit conversation loses steam or Tim Hudak is elected premier, Mayor Ford is painting himself into a sad, lonely political corner with only the Toronto Sun (and maybe not even the Sun based on today’s transit talk with columnist Sue-Ann Levy) to keep him warm.

His continued transit funding intransigence (as a matter of fact, yes, I did have to go there) has left Mayor Ford running against not just a majority of his city council but the Toronto Board of Trade. John Tory and the CivicAction Alliance. Hazel McCallion and almost every other elected official in the 905 region. Hardly a left-leaner among them.

There is a significant difference between a lone wolf howling at the moon and a crazy person shouting the same thing over and over again on a street corner.

In the hopes of riding an anti-tax wave back into office next year, the mayor will have to cross his fingers that voters and his opponents will forget some of the other stuff he promised and claimed in 2010, and not just subways. The city didn’t have a revenue problem, remember? It had a spending problem. Yet, he’s spent considerable political capital pushing for a downtown casino because all of the revenue it would generate for the city.

Oh, I see. The city doesn’t have a tax revenue problem. It’s the other type of revenue we’re a little short on.

Expect a boatload of that kind of semantic hair-splitting going forward.

Mayor Ford’s also revived his 2010 campaign idea of cutting our way to a better city by joining the empty chorus of finding efficiencies experts who insist a little belt tightening will pop out the loose change we need to build whatever it is we want. Short on details, of course. Long on vague pandering populism.

Ditto the whole boondoggle angle being embraced by those trying to fend off new taxes. Add up your eHealths and your ORNGEs and your gas plants and your PRESTO fiascos, and you’re still well short of the funds needed to build the proposed transit. That’s not to condone these trip ups or simply shrug them off. Of course, there’s a huge trust issue with handing over more money for another major public infrastructure endeavour to a government whose track record in matters of oversight is somewhat sketchy. It still doesn’t mean doing nothing about congestion and our woeful lack of regional transit.

But that’s the thing.

Mayor Ford is simply looking for any excuse to do nothing on the transit file. The thought of actually doing something runs counter to every political instinct in his body. Outside of public safety, the government isn’t supposed to do anything. Certainly not if it means disrupting traffic flow or demanding drivers pay more for the privilege right to drive their vehicles.

While Team Ford disavowed any attachment to it back in 2010, it is very telling to read through the mayor’s chief of staff’s views on public transit and the TTC back in the day. (Captured for posterity by Steve Munro, and brought to our attention by yesterday by Jude MacDonald.) In short it reads: stop funding the TTC, sell off the assets and let the market decide how people get around the city.

Since coming to office, has Mayor Ford done anything in terms of transit that has been less indifferent than the attitude his chief of staff displayed three years ago? So why would we expect him to change now? Of course, he’s fighting tooth and nail against new revenue tools for transit expansion. He doesn’t give a shit about transit.

So Team Ford has to do its best to frame this as a pitched battle to keep taxes low because the flipside of that debate – government shouldn’t be involved in actually governing – is unwinnable. The mayor and those planning his re-election campaign seem to believe people will be content enough with the notion that their taxes have been kept low to return him to office. Moreover, voters will be ready to punish any councillor who even so much as raised the possibility of new taxes.

At this juncture, it seems more like wishful thinking than any sort of sound strategy. But that’s really all this administration’s ever been about, isn’t it.

— bay of fund it all readily submitted by Cityslikr

Cornfed Cornpone

Posted on April 13, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

There does not seem to be an exaggeration too big for Councillor Doug Ford to make, an invention too outlandish, a claim too bogus. He seems entirely comfortable wearing any of those suits. There’s heightened rhetoric and then there’s Councillor Doug Ford.

As the island airport issue once more pushed its way to the front of the municipal discussion this week, the councillor stood head-and-shoulders above anyone else when it came to outright mendacity. No small feat, given there are masters of that particular trait at play in the debate. But Councillor Ford took it to an entirely different level.

“If we didn’t have Bob Deluce [president of Porter],” the councillor claimed, “there’d be a cornfield out at the airport right now.”

Yes, before Porter Airlines, the islands were little more than an empty wasteland of agriculture. As if that would be a bad thing if it was true. However, it isn’t. Unless of course we go back to a pre-European settlement era when First Nations people grew their maize. But I’m not even sure that’s true.

There was a-plenty going on over at the spot the airport now occupies on the island. Scan through the photos from the City of Toronto Archives that Jude MacDonald pointed me in the direction of. Ballparks. General stores. Summer cottages. Diving horses. This particular batch of pictures ranging in dates from the late 19th-century to 1944.

It’s not the overwhelming degree of ignorance that has become so grating, it’s the boastful, barker manner in which Councillor Ford so confidently displays it. There’s a shocking degree of pathology at work. It would be funny in its cartoonish quality if it wasn’t so disruptive to the political discourse.

We are headed for yet another knock `em down-drag `em out tussle over the fate of Porter Airlines and, perhaps, the airport itself. The rhetoric white hot. Councillor Ford has already taken it to another level. His Forghorn Leghorn act skewing the debate into ridiculous territory. Any councillor and other decision maker siding with him needs to do so carefully, in case the dirt of pure hucksterism rubs off onto them.

— I sayly submitted by Cityslikr

Playing Politics

Posted on October 5, 2012 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Try to parse the dark logic of this.

In the end, city council voted unanimously (with a few notable abstentions) to adopt the recommendations contained in the Ombudsman’ report into the civic appointment process conducted last year by the Civic Appointments Committee. Recommendations a handful of councillors and the mayor vehemently argued at council and/or in the media were unnecessary because the problems they are intended to address never occurred in the first place. Or, in the always blithely oblivious words of Councillor Norm Kelly, “… the Ombudsman is fixing something that is not broke.”

Only could a hardcore ideologue or someone completely disengaged with the reality swirling around him sit through this week’s fiery council debate, shrug his shoulders and conclude, what’s the problem? This, coming from a guy who sits right beside the budget chief, Councillor Mike Del Grande. At the height of the viciousness being tossed around at council chambers yesterday, Del Grande stood up on a point of privilege to essentially wipe his hands of the proceedings, disgusted with the gutter tone it had descended into, claiming he’d never been a part of anything like it in all his time in office.

As any of our regular readers know, I am not a fan of the budget chief. He represents almost everything I dislike in right wing politicians. And not for nothing was he once dubbed, Cardinal Mike Del Grandstand.

But in this, I have to say, his repulsion felt genuine. He talked kindly of gentlemanly behaviour at previous councils towards him by Joe Pantalone. His abhorrence at the fight over the Ombudsman’s report crossed political lines.

This is both good news and bad news for Mayor Ford.

The Ombudsman’s report and ensuing debate over it saw him abandoned by almost all of his natural allies. Not only did the budget chief walk away but other conservative councillors kept their distance. You heard nothing from councillors David Shiner or Karen Stintz. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday stood and expressed complete and utter incredulity at why council was spending so much time on this debate. The recommendations in the report were clear and good. Let’s just get on with it. At one point of time, the deputy mayor could be seen standing on the periphery of the chambers, glaring in the direction of Councillor Mammoliti, looking as if he couldn’t bring himself to be sitting in the same row as his colleague.

Even Mayor Ford’s bad lieutenant of devious doings, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong steered cleared. There was no upside to be seen going to bat for the mayor on this issue.

Only those must entrenched and (not coincidentally members of the Civic Appointments Committee) stood with Mayor Ford. Much has been rightly made of the bully antics of Councillor Mammoliti but the true depths were dredged by Speaker Frances Nunziata. Assuming her councillor seat, her 7 minute speaking time extended to at least 15 minutes with all the points of order and privilege demanded by those she shrilly huffed and puffed and hurled baseless accusations at. It was during this time, the budget chief rose, castigated his colleagues and left the chambers.

Which may represent the silver lining of all this for the mayor.

All the hurly burly created by his defenders helped impugn not only the integrity of the Ombudsman’s report but that of city staff as well in at least the minds of his most ardent supporters. ‘Politically motivated’ they managed to insert into the debate and got the chatter of it being nothing more than a he said-she said, hearsay document despite the fact that all the non-material evidence in it being sworn to under oath. They demanded names and documentation, ultimately revealing only their supreme ignorance of how the work of the city’s Accountability Officers is effectively conducted.

Yet, when all was said and done, despite the protestations of innocence and claims of partisan, political attacks inflicted upon them by the office of the Ombudsman, they voted (with the exception of councillors Kelly and Mammoliti who stepped out of the chambers when the vote was held) to accept the report’s findings and adopt its recommendations. How couldn’t they? After all, Councillor Doug Ford said over and over how the administration was dedicated to openness, accountability and transparency. For them, to vote against receiving the Ombudsman’s report would be nothing more than trying to suck and blow at the same time.

The only element of ‘politics’ introduced into all this was done on behalf of the administration. To accept the Ombudsman’s finding without attempting to denigrate it first was tantamount to admitting mistakes had been made (and I’m being very generous with that assessment). And we all know, Mayor Ford and his closest advocates are loathe to admit to mistakes. Ever.

Instead unsubstantiated allegations were thrown out against everyone and anyone. The Ombudsman, council colleagues, city staff all came under fire from Team Ford. At one point, Councillor Ford said that whatever may’ve happened, the mayor’s hands were clean. Not that the report ever named the mayor specifically, only referring to the mayor’s staff. No matter. The mayor was above reproach.

But that’s not exactly how things are supposed to work.

From the 2010-2014 Council Handbook:

2.14 Councillor staff – conduct and policies

Councillor staff, when acting in their role as a representative of the Councillor, must comply with the Code of Conduct for Members of Council (see page 100). Councillors are responsible for ensuring that their staff understand their obligations and responsibilities.

(h/t to Jude MacDonald)

Certainly the same goes for the mayor and his staff.

But accountability, it would seem, only applies to others and previous administrations. Demanding it from the mayor’s office and his most rabid supporters is just playing politics.

— demandingly submitted by Cityslikr