Don't Ask Your Neighbor To Pay For Something You Buy

No one is arguing that the feds and Queen's Park should be paying for some of the services that are provided but as Angelo points if local politicians/beauracrats make a decision on a particular project or service then the politicians should expect their constituents to pay. Policies like the Labour Trades Obligation Policy protects union jobs but at a higher cost and that decision was made at Toronto City Hall so why should someone in Jerkwater, Ontario pay?

Upload the money, download responsibilities

By ANGELO PERSICHILLI

Politics is about the abstract definitions of truth and lies and political debates evolve only around what falls between those two concepts.

Take the never-ending debate on the uploading/downloading tug-of-war between the three levels of government. Everybody talks about fairness and social justice. In reality it's only about politics. Governments, all of them, want to upload the money and download the responsibilities.

Let me focus on the tiring debate over former Ontario premier Mike Harris' reform to change the financing system of many government services.

Let's face it: Up until the last decade, municipalities complained that their main source of income was the property tax. It was bad, but also convenient for them: The province and Ottawa were taxing people and the municipalities were only spending.

The city of Toronto did not have the money to build a swimming pool? Blame Queen's Park or Ottawa.

The concept of collecting the money from the top (the feds and the province) makes sense.

Wealth is not distributed equally in all regions of the province or country, so it makes sense to collect most of the money not from regressive property taxes but progressive taxes based on income.

In other words collect proportionally, from everyone and use the money to provide everyone with the same services.

The concept is simple and sound, but the reality is different. Indeed, one might ask why we need municipalities at all, if services can be distributed equally everywhere through income taxes?

The truth is municipalities are different and these differences are caused by local politicians. The question is: How much is that difference going to cost us?

Here there are some examples.

When we talk about such services as education, health care and welfare, the needs are the same. However, there are other initiatives that change from city to city.

Collecting garbage once or twice a week is a local choice, as is the construction of swimming pools or providing free dance classes and the like. But there is more.

Toronto, for example, has its so called "Labour Trades Obligation Policy." This means only unionized contractors and their employees can bid for most of the construction jobs tendered by the city.

According to the Open Shop Contractors Association, this is over and above its "Fair Wage Policy."

According to the same source, the city contracts out at least $500 million worth of work a year that is subject to this policy.

MONEY COULD BE SAVED

By opening the bidding process to the "open shop" (non-union) contractors, the organization estimates that the city would save between $100 million to $150 million a year. Granted, we can all dispute the amount of potential savings. However, my point is that even if the cost of this policy cost property taxpayers only $1 more, that that dollar should come from the pocket of Toronto taxpayers because the decision has been made at Nathan Phillips Square, not in Hamilton or Thorold.

I'm not debating whether the policy is right or wrong. For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that it is right. Even so, why should the province subsidize a financial decision by the city of Toronto to pay more money for services by contracting out to unionized companies, or companies that pay union rates?

The system, of course is much more complicated but the bottom line, and this will be the subject of future columns, is that aside from important and vital services, cities are going to be and should be masters of their own future.

Mayors are rightly asking for more power, but with that power come more responsibility. The first responsibility, among many, is to stop crying at the doorstep of federal and provincial governments downloading the responsibility to collect the money and uploading the right to spend it as they wish.

And to do something about it.\