Toronto’s Integrity Commissioner has ruled that Councillor Rob Ford is violating City policy by not revealing his expenses.
Official records indicate he spent none ($0.00) of his permitted $53,100 in annual office expenses. Ford, “a principal of a successful Etobicoke business" who claims to bring “a bottom line and customer focus” to city hall, is well off and covers expenses out of his own pocket. A December 12th meeting will look at what can be done to Councillors like Ford who ignore policy. Sanctions, including loss of salary, are permitted under the new City of Toronto Act.
I suspect this will get sorted out. Meanwhile Ford has posted each Councillor’s expenses on his website robford.ca
My Favourites
I’ll allow that context is important but…here are some of my favourite Toronto Councillor expenses:
$$$ 1 meal, 2 coffees, 2 glasses of wine and two martinis at the Crush Wine Bar. The bill came to $112.12.
$$$ 10,000 magnets for only $2,904.27.
$$$ $34.19 for a blue case for a Blackberry.
$$$ Twenty dollars and one cent ($20.01) of gas from a Shell station.
$$$ More than thirteen hundred dollars in annual kilometrage for one Councillor who bills from his own doorstep. Didn’t you always pay your own way to get to the office?
$$$ Consumption of one chicken quesdellia, two lbs. of wings and 1 - 20 ounce beer (Keith’s), 1 - 13.5 ounce beer (Keith’s), 3- 20 ounce beer (Stellas) and one small Stella at a meeting with constituents. (Call me cheap but I never treated my constituents so well. Not with public dollars. )
$$$ Purchase of books – like the Undercover Economist whose first chapter is titled (ironically?) “Who pays for your Coffee?”
$$$ Subscriptions to the Star, Globe and Mail, Sun, National Post and MacLeans and a $35.00 for a subscription to Toronto Life magazine.
$$$ French language training at a cost of $1,576.80. Incroyable.
Look it up for yourself. You're guaranteed to find some expenses that will amaze.
OK, Some Context
Above the office expenses Toronto Councillors earn $95,000 annually, get three office staff with nearly $200,000 in salaries, receive a month severance for each year they serve when they leave and an additional $3,500 in adjustment expenses.
A case can be made for transparency and the need to report all expenses but surely an equally strong case can be made for tightening up on what a legitimate expense is.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
A Poet at City Hall
Did you catch Jim Flaherty’s cheap shots at municipal politicians? The Federal Finance Minister called them “whiners.” And as far as his surplus helping out the locals the Honourable Minister notes that he is not in the “pothole business.” We’ll assume that this statement reflects Flaherty’s interest in bigger issues such as denying global warming and ignoring the alarming levels of child poverty in Canada.
Perhaps the former Harrisite should read URBAN MELTDOWN - Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual by City of Ottawa politician and poet Clive Doucet.
Disconnections
Doucet talks a lot about “disconnections” in the book. Flaherty, I suppose, could be the poster boy to illustrate the disconnect between city governments and national politics and the gap between government and the people. We can’t continue sailing when there is a fundamental disconnection between “those on the bridge and those in the engine room.”
The Problem
That disconnection has a lot to do with what Doucet perceives the public wants - which isn’t what they are getting from governments. Governments have created global warming by “treating the planet’s biosphere like a vast sewer.”
Doucet argues that we have the knowledge to address the issues. The problem is our politics.
For example, the trend to “just in time delivery” has lead us to building warehouse districts rather than cities. Road construction and maintenance needed to accommodate cars and the kind of new development that gets approved now takes up one quarter to one half of municipal budgets. Municipal candidates get financial support from the development community. See the connections?
We are in big trouble.
“The Rise of Cities and Decline of the Planet”
Eighty percent (80%) of greenhouse gases that are “cooking the planet” are created by cities.
Doucet goes back to ancient Rome to draw a parallel of the collapse of that advanced civilization to what could face us today. Rome came down not by military defeat or economic problems but political problems “like rotten stitching coming out of an old baseball.”
We’ll suffer the same fate unless we develop the political capacity to respond to our environmental and social challenges.
Solutions
In a general way Doucet sees the reclamation of our citizenship as a key. We have to begin to see ourselves as a “sharer” of our planet rather than an occupier.
He advances some fairly specific ideas that assume political reform is a priority. Local government “by default” will be “the key to braking global warming.
We need more Clive Doucets on municipal councils before that happens. And we’ll need to reform campaign funding to keep development money out of city halls.
Go to http://capitalward.typepad.com/urban_meltdown/ for more on Doucet's ideas.
Perhaps the former Harrisite should read URBAN MELTDOWN - Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual by City of Ottawa politician and poet Clive Doucet.
Disconnections
Doucet talks a lot about “disconnections” in the book. Flaherty, I suppose, could be the poster boy to illustrate the disconnect between city governments and national politics and the gap between government and the people. We can’t continue sailing when there is a fundamental disconnection between “those on the bridge and those in the engine room.”
The Problem
That disconnection has a lot to do with what Doucet perceives the public wants - which isn’t what they are getting from governments. Governments have created global warming by “treating the planet’s biosphere like a vast sewer.”
Doucet argues that we have the knowledge to address the issues. The problem is our politics.
For example, the trend to “just in time delivery” has lead us to building warehouse districts rather than cities. Road construction and maintenance needed to accommodate cars and the kind of new development that gets approved now takes up one quarter to one half of municipal budgets. Municipal candidates get financial support from the development community. See the connections?
We are in big trouble.
“The Rise of Cities and Decline of the Planet”
Eighty percent (80%) of greenhouse gases that are “cooking the planet” are created by cities.
Doucet goes back to ancient Rome to draw a parallel of the collapse of that advanced civilization to what could face us today. Rome came down not by military defeat or economic problems but political problems “like rotten stitching coming out of an old baseball.”
We’ll suffer the same fate unless we develop the political capacity to respond to our environmental and social challenges.
Solutions
In a general way Doucet sees the reclamation of our citizenship as a key. We have to begin to see ourselves as a “sharer” of our planet rather than an occupier.
He advances some fairly specific ideas that assume political reform is a priority. Local government “by default” will be “the key to braking global warming.
We need more Clive Doucets on municipal councils before that happens. And we’ll need to reform campaign funding to keep development money out of city halls.
Go to http://capitalward.typepad.com/urban_meltdown/ for more on Doucet's ideas.
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