The announced departure of Toronto's lobbyist registrar, just two months after the registry got going, sends a worrisome signal about accountability at city hall.
Marilyn Abraham is leaving her post saying she harbours no ill will or frustration. But it is no secret that the registry she was hired to set up has received a rough ride from city council.
Abraham had requested a budget of just over $1 million to monitor lobbyists seeking to influence the politicians and bureaucrats running Canada's largest city. Council approved a budget of $711,000.
They could have given her the full $1 million just by cutting their office budget by $700/each.
But then last July, council slashed that almost in half, which forced Abraham to abandon a planned August start-up.
Council restored the agency's funding several months later, and it started up on Feb. 11. Since then, however, there has been criticism from councillors who don't like the system.
Whatever Abraham's motives for leaving, any bright candidate to replace her would surely think twice in light of the city's history vis-à-vis civil servants whose job it is to monitor the behaviour of the politicians. Tim Ivanyshyn, the bureaucrat overseeing councillors' expense claims, was fired earlier this year.
Mayor David Miller bristled yesterday at the very mention of these two cases in the same breath. And, indeed, there is no suggestion of a link between the departures of Abraham and of Ivanyshyn. There is, however, a hard-to-avoid perception that monitoring the conduct of Toronto city councillors is a thankless task.
Toronto statocrats oppressed by own little Leviathan Toronto city councillors are having problems with the lobbyist registry they legislated; further, the Registrar had to work six months with legal staff to understand the bylaw.
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