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link — Comments Off on When it’s time to party we will party hard
24
Mar 11

When it’s time to party we will party hard

At Eye Weekly, Edward Keenan makes the case for bringing parties to municipal politics in Toronto:

The way municipal government in Toronto currently functions is already similar to a party system: right now, the mayor seems to be directly controlling the votes of about 22 councillors. The opposition, organized around the NDP’s unofficial caucus, controls about 14 or 15 votes. The other dozen or so are swing votes. It’s just that everyone pretends there are no teams, because every councillor wants to appear to be a free-thinker, with allegiance only to his or her constituents.

But formalizing party alliances would add some coherence to the debate. Councillors have an obligation to consider their local constituents, while parties could specialize in big-picture, city-wide thinking. Instead of having a single vision—the mayor’s—that each councillor, for varying reasons, is either for or against, we’d have two or three separate articulated visions. The mayor’s proposals could be weighed against alternatives, rather than simply against the status quo.

via Let’s get these parties started – EYE WEEKLY.

I do think there’s some merit to the idea, especially as it would serve to codify what already exists. I’d hate for things to get so rigid, though, that council votes would be a foregone conclusion. One of the things that makes council so entertaining is that – despite the whips – votes often go in unexpected and surprising ways.

The real benefit to parties would be that it would force some councillors who like to keep quiet to actually develop principles (and, sure, ideology) rather than tailoring their views to whomever the mayor happens to be.

feature — Comments Off on Memo to Councillors: Stop the gravy train, turn off data roaming
15
Mar 11

Memo to Councillors: Stop the gravy train, turn off data roaming

Councillor expense reports for 2010 were posted online yesterday, which of course immediately led to no less than four articles in the Toronto Sun by Reporter Don Peat. All of them are boring. Kelly Grant at the Globe & Mail at least has a bit of fun with it, noting the handwritten outrage on Mayor Ford’s staff cellphone bill which I found hilarious last night. The Toronto Star’s David Rider gets points for actually uncovering something newsworthy in this whole exercise, pointing out that Case Ootes’ office paid for another candidate’s election expenses. I move that we dissolve the TCHC board in light of these allegations.

The item that most concerned me looking through these numbers, however, was just how much of the city pays to Rogers, Bell and Telus through ever-escalating smartphone bills. I get that communication is a critical part of being a city councillor — and I’d never advocate they use something as outdated as a GoldsbiePhone — but the number of times the city got stuck with huge data and roaming overages is crazy.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti's office paid more than $1500 in charges for international data roaming last year. Above is a section from his March 2010 invoice.

For example: Giorgio Mammoliti, who is the worst offender, spent $16,140.50 in ‘Telecom charges’ over the course of the year. This represents nearly half of all his office expenses in 2010. (For comparison’s sake, the average councillor seemed to spend about $2,000 on Telecom charges  last year.)

In March, Councillor Mammoliti used 7MB of cellular data while roaming in the U.S. This cost $234.60. In December, he used 6.7MB of data, costing another $202. His former Executive Assistant, Anthony Cesario, used 13.4MB of international data in January and 20.7MB in May. These two overages cost a combined $1,021.65.

For those not well-versed in the language of nerd, these are very small amounts of data — representing a few emails or webpages in most cases. Yes, this is insane. The absurdly high rates we pay for international data both here and in the United States has been called legal theft.

Mammoliti wasn’t the only councillor to face these kinds of ridiculous fees. Peter Milczyn was billed $77.92 for 9MB of data use in January. Mark Grimes was dinged $81.08 in fees in September. (He also spent $50 on Picture & Video Messages.) Shelley Carroll saw a $279 data charge in December, while Ron Moeser faced a $153 data roaming fee the same month.

Several councillors also paid per-text-message fees, instead of signing up for a bundle plan, which is significantly cheaper.

This doesn’t add up to a ton of money when you look a things in terms of a ten billion dollar operating budget, but it is probably something the city could stand to look into. At the very least, ensuring that councillors are on sensible monthly billing plans that don’t result in continued overages would be a worthwhile move. There’s not a lot the city can do in terms of the high cost of US/international data, but a quick workshop explaining how damn expensive those rates are and showing councillors how to disable data roaming might help.

Another fun IT-type note on councillor expenses, illustrating if nothing else the eclectic nature of this political body: Someone in Denzil Minnan-Wong’s office has a 3G-enabled iPad, while Anthony Peruzza still bills the city five bucks a month so his assistant can have a pager.

link — Comments Off on Whipped votes: who broke ranks on Wednesday night
11
Mar 11

Whipped votes: who broke ranks on Wednesday night

Jonathan Goldsbie’s blow-by-blow of this week’s council meeting(s) is a hell of a read, and I’m not just saying that because he mentions my name. There’s way too many interesting points to reproduce here, so let’s focus on the really juicy part — a handwritten “recommended voting strategy” that was given to Ford’s allies and detailed how they were to vote on various amendments. None of them were open votes.

Assuming that the group receiving the impromptu cheat sheet included the 23 councillors listed below the mayor on my Council Scorecard, we can get a quick sense of who broke ranks and voted with their conscience:

  • Michelle Berardinetti & Gloria Lindsay Luby voted ‘Yes’ on Shelley Carroll’s motion (3) regarding publicizing expense records, even though it was a whipped ‘No’ vote.
  • Michelle Berardinetti, Chin Lee, Gloria Lindsay Luby, Denzil Minnan-Wong & Jaye Robinson voted ‘Yes’ on Adam Vaughan’s motion (7a) that TCHC disclose any meetings with lobbyists during this interim period. The recommendation was to vote ‘No.’
  • James Pasternak voted ‘Yes’ on Adam Vaughan’s motion (7b) that funds set aside to pay Case Ootes instead go to repairs at TCHC buildings. Again, the recommendation was to vote ‘No.’

Goldsbie’s sheet doesn’t have a recommendation for Maria Augimeri’s Motion 11, which ensures that the TCHC bylaws reverted back to requiring a minimum of two board members once the new board is in place. In that case, 18 of the hardliners – including the mayor and his brother – voted against, while Michelle Berardinetti, Frank Di Giorgio, Chin Lee, Gloria Lindsay Luby and Michael Thompson voted in favour.

I’m not sure if Giorgio Mammoliti, who is apparently responsible for giving ‘hand signal’ voting instructions to councillors on items that aren’t included on the cheat sheet, gave any indication on this one. It was the last motion of the evening.

link — Comments Off on Council’s middle gets organized
11
Mar 11

Council’s middle gets organized

Robyn Doolittle at the Toronto Star obtained a copy of the Team Ford “cheat sheet” (or “recommended voting strategy” if you prefer) handed out on Wednesday morning. She produces only a low-resolution version in her article, but it’s clear that the strategy during this week’s regular meeting was to refer all items to committees to prevent the possibility of a filibuster strategy on the TCHC item.

MM5.1, a motion by Josh Matlow and seconded by Josh Colle regarding council salaries, was a recommended ‘No to waiving referral’ vote which is interesting only in the sense that Josh Colle has seemingly tried to play nice with the mayor’s office. (He ultimately voted in favour of dissolving the TCHC board on Wednesday night.)

Doolittle also indicates that some of the fence-sitting councillors are looking at forming their own voting bloc:

So far, this [middle] group has swung right, but that may be changing. These middle-of-the-road councillors have been organizing their own bloc, “the mighty middle,” in hopes of ending the voting pattern.

Right now Ford holds a majority. There are 15 on the hard left and 22 on the hard right. The mayor’s vote tips the scales. If the “mighty middle” comes together and even one of those Ford supporters drifts centre the bloc would be broken.

“Some of us are talking. Let’s just say we’re going to be more organized going forward,” said Councillor Josh Colle (Eglinton Lawrence).

via Ford hands out cheat sheet to his team – thestar.com.

Doolittle pegs the number of ‘middle’ councillors at seven, which I guess would be Colle, Matlow, Mary-Margaret McMahon, Ron Moeser, Ana Bailão, Chin Lee and Raymond Cho. I’d argue that Raymond Cho is pretty firmly on the opposition at this point.

Cho, Bailão & Matlow voted against the mayor on Wednesday night. Moeser was absent. The rest voted for.

link — Comments Off on All that jazz hands
10
Mar 11

All that jazz hands

At Toronto Life’s blog, John Michael McGrath has the best explanation of “Jazz Hands,” which will probably be a common sight at the next bunch of city council meetings:

This council meeting was probably the most uproariously crazy we’ve seen in a while. (And remember, council meetings already featured a prop toilet this year.) We got an early taste of who the crowd favoured when Adam Vaughan and Gord Perks walked in to cheers and applause. Clearly, Ford Nation was either not in attendance or they were caught in traffic behind a streetcar. After a few more rounds of cheering for the left and booing the right, Nunziata threatened to have the crowds ejected from council. As a compromise, Paula Fletcher suggested that people wave their hands in the air as a silent alternative—what The Globe and Mail’s Kelly Grant dubbed “jazz hands”—and, amazingly, it stuck. With only a few exceptions, for the rest of the night the benches used jazz hands instead of applause, and two-handed thumbs downs instead of booing.

via Council votes to fire TCHC board, but not before hours of hilarity, weirdness, jazz hands and unwitting racism | City Sindex | torontolife.com.

Good photo too.

link — Comments Off on Budget debate at City Hall
23
Feb 11

Budget debate at City Hall

Cityslikr, over at All Fired Up In the Big Smoke, has clearly spent far too much time in City Hall committee rooms the past couple of months. His post predicting the events of today’s budget debate is terrifyingly clairvoyant:

Councillor Mammoliti will rise often and patronizingly tell dissenting councillors that he understands where they’re coming from (he doesn’t) and implore them to just trust him and his newest, bestest friend, the mayor. Councillor Thompson will talk and talk and talk, sounding as if he’s not totally in the mayor’s corner but will invariably vote with him every time. Fingers crossed that councillors Palacio and DiGiorgio aren’t inclined to try and match councillors Mammoliti and Thompson verbosity for verbosity as, well, actually, let them talk. We’ll need time for the occasional pee break. Councillor Milczyn will counter every criticism of the budget with examples of atrocities committed under the Miller regime.

via Buckle Up! It’s Budget Debate Time. « All Fired Up In The Big Smoke.

He knows these people far too well.

Postscript: I included his bit about Giorgio Mammoliti because he is, for my money, the most ridiculous councillor. His list of “DID YOU KNOW?” facts is staggering. Councillor Paula Fletcher gets flagged all the time for once being leader of the Manitoba Communist Party and being married to the President of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, but DID YOU KNOW that Mammoliti used to be head of CUPE Local 767? Or that he was an MPP for Bob Rae’s NDP government? That he opposed same-sex marriage? That he changed his name from ‘George’ to ‘Giorgio’ in 2002? That, while serving on David Miller’s Executive Committee, he filed a human rights complaint against Rob Ford, and tried to get his son to run against Ford for the Ward 2 council seat? The guy’s wikipedia page is a goldmine of intrigue.

feature — Comments Off on What pushed Doug Ford to publicly call for a strong mayor system?
17
Feb 11

What pushed Doug Ford to publicly call for a strong mayor system?

The city hall headlines of the day are once again being made by the newly elected councillor from Ward 2 – Etobicoke North, who — it must be continually said — is neither the mayor nor deputy mayor. Nor does he chair any of the city’s standing committees. He recently moved back from Toronto after living in Chicago and has never, to my immediate recollection, been sighted on a TTC vehicle.

But I digress.

In an interview by the Globe & Mail’s Anna Mehler Paperny, Doug Ford fantasizes about a world where he and his brother don’t need to worry about the meddling of other duly elected officials:

It’s been a tough transition for the Ford camp to shift from a highly partisan, highly successful mayoral campaign to the enforced diplomacy of governing, attempting to woo councillors and win votes on a 45-person council with no party system, in which the mayor has only one ballot to cast.

“You’ve always got that council. You’ve got to have your 23 votes to get it passed,” Mr. Ford said.

He’d like the mayor to be able to override council “100 per cent. … So the mayor has veto power.”

via Toronto needs strong mayor with veto power, Doug Ford says – The Globe and Mail.

In the abstract, I would agree — as I did when Miller was in office — that the amalgamated Toronto could use some changes to its governance model. This would include elements of a strong mayor system at the top but also some devolution of powers down to the community council level, allowing the former municipalities of Metro Toronto to govern their local affairs more independently.

More specifically, though, I have to wonder what motivated this outburst from Doug Ford. I don’t have him pegged as the type who gets all charged up about the structure of municipal government. Is there something on the Ford’s immediate agenda that they know they don’t have the votes to pass? If so, what is it?

link — Comments Off on Toronto Council makes grandstanding gesture, calls it sacrifice
10
Feb 11

Toronto Council makes grandstanding gesture, calls it sacrifice

Kelly Grant with the Globe & Mail:

Members voted 39 to 3 in favour Tuesday of rejecting the automatic 2011 increase to their $99,619 salaries.

“It’s [time to] stand up and be counted. That’s what it boils down to,” said budget chief Mike Del Grande. “We do have structural deficits here at the city and that is never going to be corrected until we make some hard decisions … and they have to start with us first.”

via Toronto city councillors vote to freeze their own wages – The Globe and Mail.

I kind of hoped I’d never have to write about this again. But I actually sent an email to the City Clerk regarding this motion, and then my name ended up in the minutes, so I feel a bit tied to it now.

For the record, here’s the email I sent:

Fiscal responsibility is important, especially in tough economic times. But just as important that government prioritize their time and resources, focusing on things that matter. Symbolic gestures are fine during campaigns, but they have no place in government. The proposed pay freeze does not save any significant amount of money and debating the issue will take time away from focusing on the issues that actually matter to Torontonians.

The current system, that provides small, cost-of-living increases to elected officials on an annual basis, is fair. I ask that council stick with what works, vote down this motion, and move on to the more important business of the day.

Another point, to councillors like Del Grande: It’s disingenuous to conflate a politician voluntarily foregoing a small salary increase with a union member losing their job completely.

link — Comments Off on A boring story about council salaries
02
Feb 11

A boring story about council salaries

Okay, let’s cover this briefly and hopefully never again. Robyn Doolittle with the Toronto Star:

In what will come as no surprise to anyone, the Ford administration has proposed a salary freeze for both the mayor and city councillors.The motion asks members of council to “lead by example,” by cancelling their scheduled cost-of-living increase.

via Council asked to give up cost of living increase – thestar.com.

Who cares. Who cares. Who cares. There has never been anything insightful written about politician salaries. You’ll hear a lot of bullshit about “leading by example” and the plight of this year’s middle class worker who isn’t getting a pay raise. None of it matters. If this council freezes their salaries for the entire term, eventually the city will just get to a point where a major increase is necessary because there does come a point where political jobs are so unattractive that only eccentric activists and bored rich kids are willing to wade into the pool. (The latter is way more dangerous than the former.)

Councillors are not overpaid relative to any standard. They’re not particularly underpaid either. It’s an incredibly tiny portion of the city’s budget. The smartest policy on this is to give an automatic cost-of-living increase every year and then never, ever bring up the issue again. But if council must grandstand and bring the issue up, then the media should do us the courtesy of not acting like it matters.

link — Comments Off on Battle lines
09
Jan 11

Battle lines

Jonathan Goldsbie, in his first opinion piece for OpenFile Toronto, breaks down a number of interesting votes from the December council meeting. Good reading. Looking at the results of these votes serves as a good quick reference to where the battle lines are drawn in the new council. I think Robinson, Matlow and McMahon will emerge as key swing votes – no coincidence that they’re all new to council.

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