Tag Archives: Respect For Taxpayers

Election? What Election?

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Admittedly, I did not spend much time in Mayor Rob Ford’s head. The discomfort was too bearable. It was all blindingly red, the colour of rage and perpetual indignation. At times so intense as to render me unconscious, only to be revived by the sweet smell of chicken wings.

So, I was never able to figure out just what is going on in the mayor’s mind that keeps him so mum about the ongoing federal election campaign. Here he has this bully pulpit which he’s not been shy to use to come down on his particular pet peeves like councillor spending, social housing, public transit and yet on pushing forth a municipal agenda, Mayor Ford’s been L’il Miss Demure. ‘Respect for Taxpayers’ has been as much as he’s managed to type out, allowing a grand opportunity to pass him, and us – and by ‘us’ I don’t mean just us in Toronto but the overwhelming majority of us who live in metropolitan areas throughout the country — by.

The need for such proactive measures has not been greater. Municipalities in Canada are facing increasingly dire circumstances, symbolized by a four year-old estimate of an accumulated $123 billion infrastructure deficit. This cannot be handled individually by nibbling around at discretionary spending corners and stopping the gravy train. As we heard at yesterday’s Who Cares About 15 Million Voters? (h/t @_john_henry @MartinProsperiT), Canada’s 19th-century governance structure does not enable cities to deal with the problems they face on their own. The numbers simply don’t add up.

And the timing could not be more propitious for our mayor to step up to the plate. His political stripe is no secret. The federal finance minister is a family friend. If polls and opinions are to be believed, there are actually some seats in Ford Nation that are in play for Conservatives. (NOW has 5 possibly up for grabs that could turn blue from red.) These could be the difference between a win and a loss, majority versus minority for Stephen Harper. So why isn’t the mayor leveraging this opportunity to highlight urban issues? More specifically, imagine the oomph behind his ask for help in building the Sheppard subway from the feds if he helped secure the Conservatives even 1 or 2 416 ridings for them. It would go a long way to re-election in 2014.

Could it be his silence is, in fact, very tactical? By pushing an urban agenda is there some concern about alienating the even more important 905 region? That urban-suburban divide that politicians in Ottawa (and Queen’s Park) so love to exploit to their advantage might flare up against them if they’re seen to be catering to the bigger cities. Perhaps the Conservatives have asked the mayor to remain on the sidelines and let them have it in the greater GTA. If things fall their way, then maybe there’ll be a little something in it for him afterwards.

Of course, it may be worth considering that the vaunted Ford Nation that the mayor threatened to unleash on Premier McGuinty earlier this year – and it will be interesting to see if Mayor Ford maintains his disengagement during the provincial election in the fall – may not be as vaunted as he hopes. What would happen if the mayor got all involved in the campaign and had little to no to negative impact on the outcome? It wouldn’t diminish his abilities to run the city certainly but it might poke a hole in the invincibility suit he’s been wearing since his election. And if the Conservative horse he backed didn’t win? His ability to bargain at the federal level might be lessened down the road.

Setting partisan campaigning aside, and wondering why Mayor Ford has refused to pick up the urban banner during this election, it may just be more ideologically based than anything else. To step up and demand federal government action in helping cities meet the burdens put upon them would repudiate everything that brought the mayor to power. Echoing the sentiments made by Calgary’s Mayor Nenshi admits to what the mayor refused to admit to his entire political career. Cities do have a revenue problem. If Mayor Ford gives voice to that idea, then everything he ran on, all the damage he’s inflicted on the city right now under the rubric of fiscal responsibility could be seen as unnecessary, mean-spirited and nothing more than pure politics.If that’s the case, if that’s reason for the mayor’s continued absence from the federal election scene, well, it’s as damaging as anything he could by being more involved. It suggests he’s looking out for his own best interests rather than those of the city. Respect for the taxpayers indeed.

— questioningly submitted by Cityslikr

The Useful Idiocy Of Mike Del Grande

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Early on as Toronto’s 2011 budget debate got rolling, there were questions about how much the city’s new budget chief, Mike Del Grande, was in the loop about matters budgetary. He’d been caught unawares with the mayor’s decision to freeze property taxes. (Must be how the mayor rolls. Ford For Toronto pointed out yesterday that TTC chair Karen Stintz was surprised to learn that Mayor Ford was planning to build a subway along Finch Avenue within 10 years. Not single-handedly, of course, although it may come to that.) But if Councillor Del Grande bears any ill-will toward the mayor for not being the second or third or twelfth to know about important decisions made, he certainly doesn’t show it. The good councillor from Ward 39 Scarborough-Agincourt is nothing if not magnanimous. And by magnanimous, I mean dyspeptic.

It was easy to assume going in that given Mayor Ford’s obsession with the bottom line and campaign pledge to stop the gravy train, his sibling and political soul mate would be a natural choice for budget chief. Brothers… are doin’ it for themselves. But maybe it all looked a little too cozy, too Ford-y. Besides, Councillor Doug was a neophyte to municipal politics. He’d need some time to pretend to learn the ropes.

So who better to front the Ford family’s plan to dismantle the city bit by bit than a chartered accountant? It’s not personal. It’s business. The numbers just don’t add up. Don’t believe us? Ask the guy with the pocket protector.

Councillor Del Grande has been ferocious in his role as holder of the purse strings, the man whose destiny it is to restore fiscal sanity to City Hall. He understands the meaning of a penny. You don’t. He’s a chartered accountant after all. You’re not.

Once more I sat in Committee Room #1 yesterday and watched as Councillor Del Grande bullied presided over the budget committee meeting. As we have written about very extensively before (here and here and here and here), there is nothing the councillor can’t take exception to, no contrary view that he can’t blow up into a hysterical tirade about discipline and responsibility. Not for nothing a former colleague on council nicknamed him Cardinal Del Grandstand.

It is shocking to find oneself in a room with, I don’t know, 30 or so other grown ups being bellowed at, finger pounding on the desk, condescendingly talked down to and berated. I half expected the budget chief to tell me I had detention after the meeting. Adults don’t speak to adults like that. Adults shouldn’t speak to children like that because adults who do often times end up alone in their twilight years, packed off to a nursing home where the staff drug them into a satisfying silence.

Such baleful arrogance is barely tolerable in those who’ve earned it through brilliance, acuity or genius. It’s absolutely unacceptable coming from someone in possession of none of those qualities. In fact, Budget Chief Del Grande represents the exact opposite of all those things.

Once Mike Del Grande signed on to Team Ford, he lost all entitlement he may have once had to lecture others about fiscal accountability. Despite acknowledging things were slightly more complicated than simply having a spending problem, Del Grande swallowed the poisoned pill of tax cuts and freezes and no service cuts. Any chartered accountant worth their salt would’ve seen the financial train wreck coming after the tourniquet was applied to the revenue streams, and run as fast as they could in the opposite direction. Instead, the councillor has stood firm, puffed out his cold, hollow chest and declared martial law on spending. Now it’s all about tightening our belts and lowering our expectations. Everything. Is. On. The. Table.

While the budget chief may think highly of himself as a slayer of big government spending, he’s actually nothing more than the presentable if rumpled front for darker motives. Aside from his slight mayoral campaign trope of Respect For The Taxpayers, Mayor Ford and Bros. Inc. have made no secret of their ultimate goal: to reduce government to little more than a skeleton crew. Protector of property and paver of roads. Everything else is gravy.

But to articulate that aspiration out loud sounds much crazier and less populist than it does when you’re at home, talking politics over family dinner. The public is far less enthusiastic if you tell them what you’re planning on taking away from them instead of all the money you’re going to save them. They need to be convinced they’re over-taxed not under-serviced.

Enter Michael Del Grande. He and his chartered accountancy diploma changes the channel. It isn’t a question of not wanting to be involved in social housing or day care or after school programs or environmental initiatives or libraries or the zoo or city planning. We. Just. Can’t. Afford. It. We no longer ask how can we do this or that because the answer will invariably be, we can’t. Dr. No. Mike Del Grande. C.A.

The thing is, he’d probably wear that badge with pride. He truly thinks he’s saving the city from its past profligacy which is what makes him so fucking insufferable not to mention dangerous. As he methodically counts the pennies and Ebenezerly brushes off widows and orphans he offers cover for the mayor to sell this asset off and privatized that service. Hey, folks. My heart bleeds for you. But we just can’t afford it anymore. Ask the budget chief. He’ll tell you. He’s a chartered accountant.

— distastefully submitted by Cityslikr

Anti-Tax Is Anti-Citizen

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Since government, or social organization, is among the wants of man, as truly as food or clothing, we must recognize it in the science of political economy, and provide for it. Government implies functionaries and expenditures. How shall these be maintained? Evidently by the contributions of all, for all are interested in its existence. It may, therefore, rightfully claim a share of all that labor and capital have created.

— “The Science Of Wealth” (1866), by Amasa Walker

When Mayor Rob Ford succeeded in having the Vehicle Registration Tax repealed last month, he crowed, “It’s a great day for the taxpayers of Toronto. We just put $64-million back in their pockets. They can do what they want. They can go out and spend it, create jobs and stimulate the economy or they can save it.”

I don’t know if the mayor really believes all that neoconservative nonsense about tax cuts stimulating the economy and, in turn, increasing government revenues. There’s no reason why he wouldn’t since it’s an empty trope that’s been all the rage for the past 30 years or so despite having little real world evidence to back it up. And I also wonder if the mayor understands that even if tax cuts were shown to increase government revenue, municipal governments in this province would not see their coffers filled much as the kind of tax revenues they have access to aren’t the sales or consumption taxes that, theoretically, increase in a stimulated economy. It’s a subtle distinction Mayor Ford hasn’t shown much of a propensity in understanding.

In cutting the VRT, city council has essentially amputated one of the hard earned revenue tools it was granted through the City of Toronto Act. As it will if the mayor eventually carries through on his pledge to do away with the land transfer tax. His proposal to freeze property taxes on this year’s budget (which is actually a cut – see Spacing’s Dylan Reid explain in his post) slices mightily into the city’s biggest generator of revenue.

Despite what politicos on the right and their media promoters insist on telling us, taxation is not a dirty word. It’s what buys us civilization and all that. Striking the right balance on which taxes to implement and at what levels in order to not stifle healthy economic growth is the key to successful governance. Any idiot can simply appeal to our basest instincts of greed and self-interest in a call for slashing taxes. It’s proven to be a winning strategy for decades now.

The loss of the VRT revenue and the mayor’s proposed property tax freeze will cost the city in excess of $100 million. How will that money be offset? Service cuts that Mayor Ford guaranteed on the campaign trail wouldn’t happen and some $23 million in user fee increases. What’s that about Torontonians tired of being nickel-and-dimed to death? His Respect For Taxpayers seems to be very, very selective.

Anti-tax politicians are never looking out for ‘the little guy’ despite their claims to the contrary. The last thing they want to do is to give a voice to the voiceless. Their primary intent, first and foremost, is to diminish the power of government to properly look after all of its citizens regardless of where they are on the economic spectrum. If they can get in a little reverse Robin Hood wealth redistribution while they’re at it, so much the better. Anti-tax politicians are not grassroots heroes.

They are abrogators of responsibility. They don’t govern. They vandalize and plunder. They never leave anything better than they found it. They only make things worse. And time and time again, we have to chase them from office and start to clean everything up.

You’d think we’dve learned all that by now.

— get it through our thick skullsly submitted by Cityslikr