Time For Changes At City Hall

Except for personnel matters no council sessions should be held in camera. If bidders don't want their bids dealt with in public, because it might give the competition an unfair advantage, then I would suggest they not bid. I wonder how quickly union negotiations would be done if they were done in public.

City's secret spending: $1.7M a minute

By JOHN DOWNING

You should never watch sausage being made. Let me add to that old saying Toronto council voting on issues that will cost us hundreds of millions. Both can turn the stomach.

As I write, a council meeting drones on my TV. Rogers does a lot wrong but at least it telecasts council meetings on Channel 10, which illustrate why your taxes jump every year and news stories out of City Hall sound like reviews of a circus.

Unfortunately, too much urban business is hidden from us, despite the trumpeting of the Miller Lites that we have open, honest and transparent municipal government that's much better than when they were out of power.

The Green Lie -- I mean Lane -- garbage dump purchase was rushed before council and passed in secret, far from the eyes of the media, who are furious about how the mayor and cohorts treat them like mushrooms, kept in the dark under manure.

It became clear during the verbal brawling Monday over the purchase of 234 subway cars that there are still crucial unknowns and too much had been decided in secret -- occasionally in meetings from which some councillors were barred.

The dump purchase is $220 million as a start. We won't know most details for three months (including costs after years of operation), which takes it safely past election day.

That will reduce the searing quesitons that Mayor David Miller won't be able to answer. The subway purchase was $710 million, yet a competitor, frozen out when the TTC didn't call for bids, said its price would be lower. But on just these two purchases, costing far more than $1 billion after all the Ts are crossed and bucks dropped, the final decisions took just two days -- and taxpayers were barred for one of those days. Stampeded through just before this council dies.

This is the stuff of police states. Huge expenditures decided in secret. Not all councillors allowed the same info during the stretch run. Indeed, a councillor having to file freedom-of-information requests, which are usually the preserve of reporters who discover governments routinely refuse basic data on how taxes are spent.

Another galling example of the Miller Lite games has come over a million-dollar report produced by the Waterfront Revitalization Corp. on the Gardiner expressway future. It's to be released to councillors only after a two-year stall. The public will see a censored version.

It's sure to be leaked, but the fact the financial arguments are obscured will complicate examination. We have reasons why Gardiner reports and waterfront corporation activities should be scrutinized. One early report wanting to demolish the workhorse road had the usage figures wrong. Far more motorists used it than was reported.

As for the waterfront group, I haven't trusted them since they wanted to build thousands of condos in Exhibition Park and then pretended that had never been said.

It's common to complain about long-winded council debates. I've never agreed with that. I don't think debates are long or public enough.

It took council about $1.7 million a minute to approve the subway car funding. Something that important should have taken days. Maybe then we might get transit seating that would accommodate people larger than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.