unimaginative2
Senior Member
A mayor's tight grip on city hall
Critics complain Miller's control of the bureaucracy is politicizing public service
JAMES RUSK
October 27, 2007
As Mayor David Miller has consolidated power over the past year, he has extended political control of the city bureaucracy to the point that the tradition of a neutral, apolitical public service has been seriously eroded in Toronto.
That is a conclusion drawn by a number of councillors, city staffers and people with lengthy experience in public policy matters at city hall who were interviewed by The Globe and Mail.
As a result of what some describe as the politicization of the public service, staff write reports that say only what the mayor and his allies want, civil servants take on political roles, city staff have lost confidence in city manager Shirley Hoy, morale has plummeted, and many managers have left or want to get out, critics said.
Others have a more benign interpretation, saying that, under the strong mayor system, Toronto is going through the teething pains of evolving from a traditional municipal council to a government with formalized structure - with the mayor and his supporters inside the policy loop and opposition politicians outside it.
These evolutionary changes include the power of the mayor to control council's agenda, legalized through the City of Toronto Act and formalized in an agenda management system headed by Ms. Hoy at the bureaucratic level, and the mayor's control of the appointments to the executive committee and of committee chairs.
"The strong mayor system has fundamentally changed the bureaucracy, but not for the better," said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.
As evidence of politicization, critics cite the firing of the city's waste disposal manager for supporting policies the mayor does not like; the fact that Ms. Hoy and chief financial officer Joe Pennachetti - not a politician - held public hearings on new taxes; Ms. Hoy's recent cost-cutting exercise; and the fact that some civil servants, including the CFO, have worn buttons supporting the effort to get GST revenue from Ottawa.
While Ms. Hoy said in an interview that "it may have been a mistake on our part" to hold the hearings, she said she does not see her actions in looking for cost savings as politicizing her job and that she is "very, very concerned" that city staff may not be regarded as non-partisan and professional.
But Councillor Michael Walker, who had welcomed the election of Mr. Miller because he believed his voice would be more clearly heard under him than it was under his predecessor, Mel Lastman, now sees it as just that - partisan and politicized.
"I sense a major politicization of the civil service, particularly senior management," said Mr. Walker, who noted that "even the likes of Mel Lastman and his gang" did not try to stifle debate on council in the way that he sees happening now.
The key difference, said Councillor Case Ootes, who was Mr. Lastman's deputy mayor, is that Mr. Lastman's office paid attention to a few key files, and left the civil service to bring whatever recommendations it deemed best directly to council, even when the mayor, as he sometimes did, differed with the staff proposal.
"That's the fundamental difference between the Lastman regime and this regime," Mr. Ootes said.
Now, instead of reports in which staff give their unvarnished best advice to council, "no one signs their name to a report unless someone in the mayor's office has looked at the report and thinks it is a good one," said a former city staffer, who asked not to be named because he still deals with city hall.
That violates a basic principle of good governance: that the civil service should be able to speak truth to power. In Toronto, "they are not able to offer the best advice," said one senior municipal official, no longer at the city, who asked not to named for fear of betraying former colleagues who have confided in him.
In the eyes of critics like Mr. Minnan-Wong, this abrogates the key principle on which local government has long operated: Municipal councils make decisions after receiving advice from an open and impartial civil service.
"Bureaucrats no long give their best advice or best idea for fear of reprisals from their political masters," he said.
Another expert on municipal governance, who asked that he not be named because he was speaking personally, not on behalf of the employer for whom he acts at city hall, said city staff are responding to what they sense is a fundamentally changed situation at city hall.
"A good civil service is aware of politics, but does not play it," he said.
With the strong mayor system, "the fuel on which policy runs is more political than before," he added.
And councillors, who have been weakened in the citywide policy debate by the strong mayor system, look at policy primarily in terms of what is best for their ward, he said.
"A good policy for the city as a whole won't get advanced unless it has traction at the ward level," he added.
The result is that the city is moving toward what he calls "an Americanized model" of city politics, which sets aside the traditional slow and careful development of city policy by an impartial city staff for a politically driven process controlled by the mayor and his council allies.
In this model, policy-making becomes all politics, all the time, with the mayor and councillors responding to issues on the basis of short-term political pressures, and then moving quickly to formulate policy with neither careful study nor recognition of its long-term impact on the city, he said.
Critics complain Miller's control of the bureaucracy is politicizing public service
JAMES RUSK
October 27, 2007
As Mayor David Miller has consolidated power over the past year, he has extended political control of the city bureaucracy to the point that the tradition of a neutral, apolitical public service has been seriously eroded in Toronto.
That is a conclusion drawn by a number of councillors, city staffers and people with lengthy experience in public policy matters at city hall who were interviewed by The Globe and Mail.
As a result of what some describe as the politicization of the public service, staff write reports that say only what the mayor and his allies want, civil servants take on political roles, city staff have lost confidence in city manager Shirley Hoy, morale has plummeted, and many managers have left or want to get out, critics said.
Others have a more benign interpretation, saying that, under the strong mayor system, Toronto is going through the teething pains of evolving from a traditional municipal council to a government with formalized structure - with the mayor and his supporters inside the policy loop and opposition politicians outside it.
These evolutionary changes include the power of the mayor to control council's agenda, legalized through the City of Toronto Act and formalized in an agenda management system headed by Ms. Hoy at the bureaucratic level, and the mayor's control of the appointments to the executive committee and of committee chairs.
"The strong mayor system has fundamentally changed the bureaucracy, but not for the better," said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.
As evidence of politicization, critics cite the firing of the city's waste disposal manager for supporting policies the mayor does not like; the fact that Ms. Hoy and chief financial officer Joe Pennachetti - not a politician - held public hearings on new taxes; Ms. Hoy's recent cost-cutting exercise; and the fact that some civil servants, including the CFO, have worn buttons supporting the effort to get GST revenue from Ottawa.
While Ms. Hoy said in an interview that "it may have been a mistake on our part" to hold the hearings, she said she does not see her actions in looking for cost savings as politicizing her job and that she is "very, very concerned" that city staff may not be regarded as non-partisan and professional.
But Councillor Michael Walker, who had welcomed the election of Mr. Miller because he believed his voice would be more clearly heard under him than it was under his predecessor, Mel Lastman, now sees it as just that - partisan and politicized.
"I sense a major politicization of the civil service, particularly senior management," said Mr. Walker, who noted that "even the likes of Mel Lastman and his gang" did not try to stifle debate on council in the way that he sees happening now.
The key difference, said Councillor Case Ootes, who was Mr. Lastman's deputy mayor, is that Mr. Lastman's office paid attention to a few key files, and left the civil service to bring whatever recommendations it deemed best directly to council, even when the mayor, as he sometimes did, differed with the staff proposal.
"That's the fundamental difference between the Lastman regime and this regime," Mr. Ootes said.
Now, instead of reports in which staff give their unvarnished best advice to council, "no one signs their name to a report unless someone in the mayor's office has looked at the report and thinks it is a good one," said a former city staffer, who asked not to be named because he still deals with city hall.
That violates a basic principle of good governance: that the civil service should be able to speak truth to power. In Toronto, "they are not able to offer the best advice," said one senior municipal official, no longer at the city, who asked not to named for fear of betraying former colleagues who have confided in him.
In the eyes of critics like Mr. Minnan-Wong, this abrogates the key principle on which local government has long operated: Municipal councils make decisions after receiving advice from an open and impartial civil service.
"Bureaucrats no long give their best advice or best idea for fear of reprisals from their political masters," he said.
Another expert on municipal governance, who asked that he not be named because he was speaking personally, not on behalf of the employer for whom he acts at city hall, said city staff are responding to what they sense is a fundamentally changed situation at city hall.
"A good civil service is aware of politics, but does not play it," he said.
With the strong mayor system, "the fuel on which policy runs is more political than before," he added.
And councillors, who have been weakened in the citywide policy debate by the strong mayor system, look at policy primarily in terms of what is best for their ward, he said.
"A good policy for the city as a whole won't get advanced unless it has traction at the ward level," he added.
The result is that the city is moving toward what he calls "an Americanized model" of city politics, which sets aside the traditional slow and careful development of city policy by an impartial city staff for a politically driven process controlled by the mayor and his council allies.
In this model, policy-making becomes all politics, all the time, with the mayor and councillors responding to issues on the basis of short-term political pressures, and then moving quickly to formulate policy with neither careful study nor recognition of its long-term impact on the city, he said.
