Toronto Reichstag?????

David Miller's powerful mayor system borders on 'dictatorship' in early weeks of new term, according to our columnist
By SUE-ANN LEVY

The new term has barely begun but a pattern seems to already be emerging. Sources say the mayor's office is doing everything to keep many issues from council, even going as far as to re-write staff reports

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After a four-month hiatus, Mayor David Miller's newly empowered executive committee resumed last week with 19 items on its agenda.

The public works committee -- charged with determining a future for the city's garbage -- dealt with a scant three items. One involved electing the vice-chair. The planning and growth management committee did no business at all. Its members spent the morning hearing staff presentations.

Sources say that was deliberate -- the direction from the mayor's office was to keep the agendas "light."

One could suppose this was to allow new committee members and new politicians to get up to speed. If it were not for another edict sources say was laid down recently by Miller's office: There are to be "no surprises" on the committee agendas, "no freelancing" by committee chairman and "no leaks" of issues presumably to the press.

The new term has barely begun but a pattern seems to already be emerging. Sources say the mayor's office is doing everything to keep many issues from council, even going as far as to re-write staff reports.

"The mayor doesn't want anything on the floor of council that needs to be debated and then it should only be related to his mandate," one source told me last week. "The next four years are going to be everything according to Miller."

'Fallen by wayside'

Coun. Karen Stintz, who sits on the planning committee, noticed some of the planning-related issues council approved last term "seem to have fallen by the wayside.

"I feel the committees are already being marginalized," she said.

Coun. Doug Holyday remembers the hundreds of issues that came forward to committees following the election hiatus in previous years. He believes the mayor considers himself like a premier and his inner circle the cabinet -- entitled to vet everything through his office. "It almost makes you wonder why the rest of us were elected," he bristled.

You'll get no argument from me that under a strong mayor system the person who leads this city has every right to set his or her agenda. Stintz feels, however, that Miller's regime is fast becoming a "dictatorship."

Six-figure salaries

Holyday says staff have "no choice" but to tell the mayor what he wants to hear lest they be relieved of their six-figure salaries. It happened to many independent thinking bureaucrats last term. "Yes, the secrecy has increased," he said. "The city is still being managed but I don't know how."

There's no doubt an issue with secrecy emerged towards the end of Miller's last term. But now it seems to be formalized -- all ironically in the name of improving council decision making and openness.

Planning committee chairman Brian Ashton conceded he's been told of the "freelancing" rule -- that the mayor doesn't want his executive "attacking issues" which don't fit in with his mandate.

There's now a "formal" agenda forecasting system that lists the staff reports coming to committees and when. But contrary to what my sources told me, Jim Hart of the city manager's office insists his office gives no direction as to whether and when those reports should come forward.

There's a multi-year Meeting Management Initiative (MMI) budgeted at $4.5-million that has created a new "procedure bylaw" (new meeting rules), redesigned staff and committee reports so they're written in "plain language" and developed a new computer system to create those reports.

Peter Fay, director in the City Clerk's office, said some $1.5-million of that was spent on five staff to support the project.

But Brad Butt, president of the Greater Toronto Apartment Association, finds the new agendas "a lot more confusing" -- so much so that he thinks it will turn people off City Hall.

It's all enough to make one very disheartened with the new world order at City Hall unless you consider one point.

"There's an awful whack of responsibility put in the hands of one individual (Miller)," Coun. Holyday says. "But if the mayor's agenda is not followed, there will be nobody to blame but the mayor."