Votes Rob Ford's Team Lost at the September 27, 2011 special meeting of City Council. Click for bigger.
At today’s special City Council meeting on the Core Service Review, the mayor’s team was on the losing end of seven votes. Though it’s not fair to call it a staggering rebuke, it stands as more evidence that Rob Ford is losing his grip on City Council and will continue to have trouble getting controversial policies approved without compromise.
Today’s scorecard is particularly interesting because we also have copies of the “cheat sheets” that were distributed to friendly councillors by members of the mayor’s staff prior to the vote. (All credit to City Hall journalist Jonathan Goldsbie for posting copies of the sheet: here’s part one & part two.) Of the cheat sheet items that weren’t left ‘open’ — meaning councillors could vote with their hearts — seven of them were defeated after several of the mayor’s traditional supporters went against him. Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby in particular has distanced herself from the mayor over the past couple of days, disparaging the entire Service Review process for forcing councillors to vote for cuts without relevant information in front of them.
I’ll have more commentary on this later, but for now, the data.
Special City Council Scorecard: Motions on Amendments Relating to the Core Service Review Recommendations
- Google Docs (Includes All Votes on Amendments)
- Images: Whipped Votes | Whipped Votes That Were Lost (As Seen Above.)
Disclaimer: There are a TON of votes here and I may have made mistakes. All apologies in advance for any small errors.