City Hall's accountability squeeze is risky business

Shortchanging the accountability office could lead City Hall down a dark road, writes Edward Keenan.


Thestar.com
March 26, 2015
By Edward Keenan

It appears it’s accountability officer season at City Hall.

Not because multiple reports have landed for consideration at next week’s council meeting, from the integrity commissioner (recommending an apology from Councillor Rob Ford over a racial slur he made while mayor) and the lobbyist registrar (about improper lobbying of the Ford brothers by Apollo Health and Beauty Care and a breach of lobbying guidelines by former lobbyist and now mayor’s office staffer Vic Gupta).

I mean more that you expect to see Elmer Fudd wandering the second floor wearing a deerstalker cap carrying a shotgun, whispering “Be vewy vewy quiet. I’m hunting accountabiwity officers.” With all the subtlety and seriousness of purpose of that classic Looney Toons foil, some city councillors are currently attempting to acquire watchdog pelts as trophies.

Earlier this week, Fiona Crean’s hopes for a contract renewal fell victim to councillor vendettas. She said she hoped to avoid “damaging the office” by stepping aside, but it seems some are determined to damage the office - and the other accountability offices - anyway.

Councillor Stephen Holyday has a member motion on the new council agenda, seconded by Councillor Justin Di Ciano, that could cut the number of accountability officers in half - combining the Auditor-General and Ombudsman into one job, and the Integrity Commissioner and Lobbyist Registrar into another. They title this proposal “Alternative Options for Stronger Accountability.”

Stronger accountability. Through fewer accountability officers. Right.

The appropriate response is, “are you new here?” But I realize that the gentlemen councillors from Etobicoke are in fact new at City Hall, as is Mayor John Tory, so perhaps some history is in order.

Once upon a time, there was a computer leasing contract that ballooned from $1 million to $43 million to $85 million. An inquiry into how exactly that happened uncovered lobbyists flying councillors and city staff to other cities for hockey games and delivering plastic bags full of cash to politicians in parking lots, among other things. The whole affair revealed a shocking culture of cronyism and outright corruption at city hall.

Stephen Holyday could ask his father, who was a councillor at the time, to fill him in on the details.

In response to that scandal, the city created its four accountability offices. These jobs are so important that the City of Toronto Act - the provincial legislation that serves as our municipal constitution - requires three of them to exist (it requires a lobbyist registry, but the decision to appoint a part-time registrar is up to the city). These four officers are the thin line protecting us from the conveniently malleable ethics of many officials.

They have made enemies of those they investigate, name, and shame. Some of those named are shameless, so rather than repent they look for revenge.

Thus, the recent conspiracy to limit the resources of the accountability officers, and the successful effort to force Crean to walk away. And now an attempt to eliminate officers in the name of “possible synergies to be found by combining oversight.”

The motion asks for a report on this from the city manager, Joe Pennachetti, who has already advised the Star that he thinks it might be legal to combine functions under the city of Toronto Act, as long as all the functions still exist. There’s a real danger here that a lot of doublespeak about synergy and big talk about efficiency will defang the watchdogs.

What we are talking about here is the integrity of democracy in this city. The officers save the city money when they find waste, yes, and they assure change when they discover poor service, yes. But most importantly, they do their best, when they catch cheating and lying and skirting of the rules, to ensure the public can have faith in the system that represents them. Few things are as important as that.

When he was a talk show host, as Now magazine recently reported, John Tory said of the Ombudsman’s office, “She will pay back that money in her budget a hundred times over and give the mayor some happy taxpayers.” He was right, and those words apply to all the accountability offices.

As Tory sees long-serving councillors and newbies alike sniffing blood in the wind and going in for the kill, and as he himself thinks through “the resource allocation question,” he ought to remember those words.

In the old cartoons, Elmer Fudd generally wound up shooting himself in the face. If the city short-changes its accountability offices, it will achieve a similar result.