Oshawa---Prepare to be Amazed!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
January 31, 2011


There are a couple of Oshawa City Hall topics receiving coverage and comment in the media and considerable criticism in the social media this week.

First is the appointment of a replacement local councillor for the disgraced Mike Nicholson who refused to be sworn to council after winning a seat in the election, an occurrence that undoubtedly could only happen in Oshawa, and in two elections in a row in Oshawa--- “Believe It Or Not!”

This is so bizarre, it could probably be featured in the Ripley column by the same name for those old enough to remember the syndicated newspaper cartoon panel which pictured items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims.

Anyway council deliberations for Nicholson’s replacement will take place at a February 3rd Special Council Meeting and should be great fun for all who want a good night of free entertainment and a night of democracy (or not) in action.

Council has decided to appoint rather than call an election to fill the vacancy so some favored son or daughter is going to be gifted almost four years of part time employment requiring approximately 10 hours a month at a salary of approximately $300 per hour (1/3 tax free).

The lucky recipient will also be placed in a “shoo-in” position for election in the regular municipal elections in 2014.

The idea of appointment, and the appointment process itself, has generated giant Facebook debate by the chattering classes on both the pro and anti appointment sides of the question.

Of grave concern to some is that the right to be a candidate is contingent upon being nominated and seconded by a council member. This has led some to observe that, while candidacy in a regular election is open to all, is non-political, and is automatic upon applying and posting a fee with the city clerk, the appointment process chosen by council is more akin to council opening up its arms to consider only “friends” into the club and is therefore seen as cronyism and nepotism.

In supporting his successful motion to consider any interested candidate nominated and seconded by a member of council, John Aker stated, ”Everyone (every politician, he meant!) will be able to bring forth a candidate. It satisfies democracy. No one (no politician, he meant!) is excluded.”

So democracy we learn is about giving politicians the power to select council members, not the people. Hell, you learn something new every day! There are rebellions occurring today in Tunisia and Egypt by citizens who oppose that view as well as civil unrest in many places in the world where the people are too repressed even to rebel.

The process of requiring all those considered for appointment to be nominated and seconded by a sitting council member makes politicians themselves the gatekeepers of who can be considered and this is a very dangerous precedent.

It is however, the distinctive mark of dictators and despots worldwide who bestow their blessings on the chosen thus insuring continuation in perpetuity of the beliefs and policies of those in charge. Hell, they'd never appoint someone with new ideas who brings new or contrary thinking to the club.

The other danger in City Council’s process is that the names of those interested in the position is secret and only the names of those nominated will be made public. While citizens will not get a chance to vote, they will not even know who expressed interest in the position, unless they are nominated, to speculate on reasons for council’s choice.

The politicians have turned down a by-election because of the cost. But hey! There is a cost to every election and so should we throw out the idea of democracy to save money? Maybe dictators are just efficient cost savers!

As astute Facebook writer, Tom Mitchell stated, “If Mayor John Henry really thinks that money is the issue in filling the vacant council seat, he should hold an auction. Get a grip your worship!” Mitchell continued, “Politics isn't the office furniture biz!”

In terms of appointing rather than electing politicians, I’ll never forget a young guy I met whose Chinese name translated into English as “Red Star Rising.” He had reported to Shijiazhuang, the Capital City of China’s Hebei Province where I worked, to have his Assignment as Mayor changed to another city. At the time, knowing a little bit about Democracy and the Electoral Process in the free world, I was a little surprised to see politicians being directly appointed by a government. But now I know you needn’t go all the way to China to witness this phenomenon. You can see it right here in Oshawa.

But anyway, make sure you skedaddle down to city council chambers for the special meeting on Thursday Feb. 3 if you want to see all the fun. As with other meetings this year that might generate considerable public interest, this decision will be made on a night when Rogers Cable does not televise the event....All in the interests of non-transparency and non-accountability of course!

The second event of interest this week is Mayor John Henry’s infantile publicity stunt to hightail it out of Oshawa in a jump seat astride a Mackie’s 24 wheeler Moving Truck to various Golden Horseshoe Mayor’s offices and council chambers seeking support for Oshawa’s opposition to the Provincial Plan to terminate construction of the expanded Highway 407 at Simcoe Street.

The 407 issue is one that John Henry didn’t mention on the campaign trail so it appears he is a Johnny-Henry-come-lately to the cause. All of the considerable public interest so far has been generated by the superb leadership of the issue by Columbus resident, Rosemary McConkey. She has organized bus protest groups to Queen’s Park, has organized extensive sign campaigns, has generated media coverage, and has brought in many prominent speakers and politicians, even MP’s and MPP’s and the Provincial Leader of the Opposition to focus attention and interest on the cause.

And while many issues simmer in this city with little apparent action, our mayor is now hopping on McConkey's 407 bandwagon and cavorting around in a giant moving truck with prominently displayed, “Mackie’s Moving,” emblazoned on the side to chat with Golden Horseshoe Mayors and Councils. They must be impressed!

I wonder whether Premier McGuinty would have sprung to attention in Peterborough recently if he’d seen Henry jump out of the moving truck to greet him?

Maybe use of the Moving Van was symbolic.

During the campaign, I spoke to a number of people in new housing subdivisions north of Taunton who reflected to me that if they’d known about the enormous taxes here, they’d have never come. And the high taxes have decreased their house values below their outstanding mortgages trapping them here. If they could afford to move, they would, I was told repeatedly.

So maybe Henry’s use of the Moving Van was symbolic of this widely-held sentiment...even Henry is grabbing a moving van out of town!

In one report, I read, in response to criticism of being “anti-green” in burning all the gas in the giant rig rather than driving in his car, Henry said, “The truck was going past St. Catharines anyway and so I just hitched a ride.” There was no report on how he was getting home---the bus, hitchhiking, or helping to unload the Mackie’s Truck and then catching a ride back in the empty rig.

While it is common for municipalities to get their ideas supported and sanctioned by other municipalities, and numbers of such requests appear on Oshawa City Council Agendas every council meeting, it is extremely unusual for busy mayors to have the time or interest to make personal representations at many out-of-town council meetings. Mayors who do this either have time to burn or get an image boost from such public appearances....and John Henry might need an image boost after spending 20 years driving around in a truck to pick up office equipment for repair!

Maybe with all these meetings from Cornwall to Windsor, Henry is hoping to bolster his image and buttress support for a run at some higher office. LOL! If so, nobody best see him scamper out of that 24 wheeler!

With this PR stunt, it is obvious we have a mayor more interested in PR than substance. As PM Harper's conservative plant in the city, he is following his leader well....no substance, no action or leadership here, but flying around the world playing the big shot while looking for photo ops. Henry is learning well at the hand of his master!

With this Mackie Truck antic, Henry is continuing as a mayor of image rather than substance.

Anyway this image of Mayor John Henry jumping on the Mackie’s Moving Truck has sure enough generated tons of publicity for Mackie’s.....and tons of ridicule for Oshawa!

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

A Giant Windfall Payday for the City's “Fired” Politicians

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
January 24, 2011

Mayor John Henry’s campaign literature stated the city needed new, principled leadership at city hall and that he’d promote new accountability, transparency, and economic growth for the city.

In terms of the principled leadership promised, I’ve heard on good authority that Henry has been dragging his feet on meeting with COSCO officials regarding expansion into Oshawa since COSCO’s cut-rate on-site pharmacies would steal business from his wife’s pharmacy.

If this is true, putting his family’s self interest first is inconsistent with his promise of restoring respect for the taxpayer and providing accountable leadership at city hall. It sounds more like Chicago politics under infamous Richard J. Daley’s iron fisted and corrupt administration.

Mayor John Henry’s leadership has not enjoyed the customary “Honeymoon Period” always afforded new office holders. In Henry’s case, it was a record short-lived honeymoon as even many of his former avid supporters are now his critics.

Council’s indecisiveness in replacing disgraced Mike Nicholson’s abandoned council seat speaks volumes about council productivity and the mayor’s leadership. Since the city wide vote is undemocratic which depends upon voter knowledge of candidates, I do support council appointment to fill the vacancy out of fear that, in an election, many unwary Oshawa voters would jump off the turnip truck and elect Brian Nicholson or Mary Anne Sholdra.

Appointment does, however, remove the possibility that city council could seek public opinion on the general vote election system that was highly criticized by the majority of city voters. Fixing the election system would be a first action by a council truly interested in democracy.

Accountability and transparency is still a major question with city council, as it is with all governments, despite the fact that all elected city politicians promised a more open and accountable council. Sadly, what we have has not changed in this regard.

A prime example of this lack of transparency has to do with the severance payments received by retiring and defeated politicians. While information on this has recently been released on city Report FA-11-14 published on the January 20, 2011, Finance and Administration Committee Meeting Agenda available on the city web page, the report only gives half of the story hiding the full payout amounts no doubt to mitigate citizen anger at the largesse politicians serve themselves at taxpayer expense.

Section 242(1) of the Municipal Act, R.S.O. 1990, c.M.45, provides that a municipality may pass by-laws for paying remuneration to the members of Council, and such remuneration may be determined in any manner that Council considers advisable.

Because of the breadth of remuneration permitted by this law (anything Council considers advisable!), the parting allowance itself does not tell the full story of compensations and benefits provided.

And getting a clear answer to the full benefits is virtually impossible to establish....whether severance allowances, like politician’s salaries, are 1/3 tax free, whether there are monthly pensions when age requirements are met, whether drug and other health benefits are provided, whether equipment like computers, cell phones, and other electronic equipment were inventoried and had to be returned....and these questions could go on ad infinitum. Answers require very specific questions with no information being voluntarily provided.

I first requested disclosure of the severance amounts from the city clerk’s office on November 8, 2010, and was told the info would be published in an annual report in the first quarter of 2011 and that I’d have to file a Freedom of Information request (FOI) to see it earlier, direction I received on two subsequent occasions, although they couldn`t tell me the cost to provide this information they had at hand, having already written the cheques for the huge amounts.

Finally on Jan 8, 2011, in response to a threat to finally file a FOI request and to a comment from me that the giant lack of transparency in a council purportedly operating on policies of openness, accountability, and transparency would be a huge revelation to the general public, Percy Luther, of the Clerk`s Department, informed me that he had looked into this further, as I had requested, and informed me of the disclosure report FA-11-14 mentioned earlier.

City policy calls for political severance allowances of one month`s salary for every year of council experience. City severance allowances thus generated were: John Gray, $110,821.33; J. Kolodzie, $57,042.00; L. Parkes, $45,950 + $34,759 unclaimed retroactive pay when she campaigned as Federal Liberal Candidate during the period Dec. 2004 to Nov. 2006; A. Cullen, $21,072.92 + an MBA; R. Lutczyk, $22,183.00; and B. Nicholson, $22,183.00. Mary Anne Sholdra did not serve on council long enough to qualify for any severance allowance.

These handsome figures are only part of the story and don`t include Regional severance allowances nor do they include tax-free pay provisions, or any health or pension benefits outlined earlier.

Durham Region figures have not been published and these figures are much more difficult to establish than city severance allowances.

My first request for the figures resulted in the Regional Clerks department sending me the first page only of the Severance Benefits By-law (Number 61-93) which gave a preamble but didn’t get to any details of the severance allowance. In the end, they turn out to be the same as Oshawa`s policy in providing one month’s salary for every year of regional council experience up to a maximum 18 month's salary.

So secretive are the Regional Political severance allowances that it’d probably be easier obtaining top secret classified military intelligence. Getting information is not helped by the general lack of co-operation by Regional bureaucrats who dragged their feet at every instance often neglecting my requests for information. Information finally provided was not compiled into a single place and required extrapolating info from a number of separate sources.

Regional officials couldn’t help by simply running me off a computerized list of severance cheques already printed and distributed. That would make it too easy and the public must be forced to dig for information. Transparency is only a word, not a practice!

The experience list provided me recorded 22 years of experience for Brian Nicholson qualifying him for the maximum 18 months of salary. They didn’t seem to remember that he had a break in service with his defeat in 2000 and presumably collected 15 month’s severance at that time. Since the maximum payout allowed by the policy is 18 months salary, he presumably would only be eligible for an additional 3 years with his October 25, 2010 defeat.

Because Nicholson’s defeat was overlooked in the figures given me, I surmise that he has double dipped for a giant overpayment, collecting 15 month’s severance in year 2000 and the maximum 18 months on his recent defeat.

A request to Durham Region Payroll Officer, Joanne Cermak, to confirm Nicholson`s payout, went unanswered. Nor did she answer my other queries whether the payouts are 1/3 tax free or if politicians can claim any other entitlements, compensations, or retirement benefits such as pensions payable at some defined age of eligibility, health benefits, etc., all in addition to the handsome cash severance packages they received.

Based on 2009 Regional Salaries (and not the 2010 salaries that would have been used) the minimum Regional payouts to retiring/defeated Regional reps from Oshawa are: John Gray (16 months credit+ committee Chair = $69807); Joe Kolodzie (max 18 months credit = $69533); Brian Nicholson (if only 3 months credit based on payout remaining after 2000 election defeat and break in service = $11589 or $69533 if break in service and 2000 payout forgotten about in which case there`s been an overpayment of $57944----but what the hell, it`s only taxpayer money!); Robt. Lutczyk (10 months credit = $38629); April Cullen (7 months credit + Committee Chair = $30540).

So combined Regional and City severance WINDFALL allowances for our retiring and defeated politicians are as follows: John Gray $180628, Joe Kolodzie $126575, Brian Nicholson $33762 (or $91786 if Region overlooked Nicholson’s 2000 defeat and collection of eligible severance at that time), Robert Lutczyk $60812, April Cullen $51613 + that MBA.

So the best estimate of taxpayer payout to fired and retired councillors is a minimum $453,000, almost half a million of your taxes, maybe money well spent to get rid of these politicians.

Remarkably, these total severance allowances are worth about the equivalent of $3/4 million to the politicians if the allowances are 1/3 tax free as is their regular salary.

And hey, all of these payouts were unbudgeted and so were paid for from “found money,” that fat, waste, and excess I’ve written about so often---the fat, waste and excess that I suggested cutting by 3% during the election campaign....and the fat, waste, and excess politicians will pad by whatever percentage tax increase they hit you with this year!

Don’t worry! Be Happy! But pay those taxes!

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

EDITOR'S NOTE
A week after my unanswered request and days after my column deadline time, i received the following email which provides some, but not all, of the information previously requested that has been referred to in the body of the column above. These recently provided figures will allow readers to revise upwards the severance figures provided above....and they will also clear up the mystery of B. Nicholson's severance package and the questions raised by incorrect information provided me earlier by Regional Officials. The over-estimation of J. Kolodzie's allowance was due to overlooking the fact that he was an Oshawa Local City Councillor only for many years and not a Regional Councillor

Mr. Longworth, In regards to your inquiry about the severance pay entitlement of the 16 Regional Councillors who did not return for the 2010 to 2014 term, please see the information listed below. (You will see that only 15 have applied at this time.)

Individuals are entitled to this severance if they have more than three years of service, up to a maximum of 18 months remuneration.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Abernethy, Jim: $15,992.67
Crawford, Scott: $51,976.17
Cullen, April: $31,487.17
Emm, Gerald: $71,967.00
Grant, John: $15,992.67
Gray, John: $71,970.67
Johnson, Richard: $71,967.00
Kolodzie, Joseph: $27,987.17
Littley, Bonnie: $15,992.67
Lutczyk, Robert: $39,981.67
McMillen, Jim: $27,987.17
Nicholson, Brian: $27,987.17
Pearce, Marilyn: $44,981.67
Shepherd, Bob: $15,992.67
Trim, Charles: $44,981.67

Regards,
Tania Laverty
Manager, Communications The Regional Municipality of Durham
P: 905-668-7711 ext. 3813
E: tania.laverty@durham.ca

Oshawa's Annual Turkey Strut Tax Setting Mating Dance

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
January 17, 2011



Well it’s city budget time and the annual mating dance ritual, “The Strut of the Turkeys” between bureaucrats and politicians has begun.

It follows a predictable time worn pattern and the steps along the way are craftily designed to make you ecstatic in accepting your yearly tax increase.

Tax cuts, sold by the politicians, will usually come with some sleight of hand magic that will make you thankful for the city revenue cuts in some well publicized areas while taxes and user fees and service cuts are introduced in a myriad of other areas to more than make up for the well publicized cuts.

The real test of tax cuts is to see bottom line cuts in operating revenues of the city and real cuts to bottom line government expenditures. We must see a total reduction of monies taken in by city hall, not simply a rebalancing of tax sources with the net revenues remaining the same. We need governments to operate with more efficiency at less cost, the same goal as every profitable business worldwide.

I have written in past columns that when politicians approve incremental percentage tax increases, which is the usual case, the effect is to pad any past fat, waste, and inefficiencies that had crept into the administration over the years. The only way to cut such fat, waste, and inefficiencies is to incrementally cut departmental budgets.

The Annual “Strut of the Turkeys” budget process for governments at all levels is always the same and follows the following well defined processes.

1. Politicians call for a tax cut, hold, or small increase

2. Bureaucrats raise alarms about the disasters to occur as a result of anything less than the inflated X% increases they’ve requested and outline an exaggerated or inflated list of outrageous and alarming service cuts required to meet the demands of the politicians.

3. All of the cuts bureaucrats outline as required to meet political demands are those that have the highest public profile and political impact.

4. As a result, the politicians get cold feet at the alarms raised by the bureaucrats and they moderate their demands about the cuts, holds, or small increases, and give the bureaucrats the moderate increases they really wanted in the first place. In the process, bureaucrats make imperceptible adjustments to meet the reduced allocations with no discernable difference to the public. It’s like selling a used car---ask high so there’s room to negotiate down to the price you wanted in the first place.

In Oshawa, all those elected called for tax cuts or a tax freeze since this was the number one taxpayer concern.

Politician’s push for tax cuts is offset by a bureaucratic push for bigger budgets and all of the power is with the bureaucrats. If knowledge is power, bureaucrats have all the knowledge of their operations and by selectively providing or withholding information, mislead politicians about the true state of affairs. The combination of information denial and the provision of falsified information by bureaucrats underlie the annual cat and mouse budgeting process which defines bureaucrat’s reluctance to be dragged away from their gold plated lattés.

Part of the lies, of course, are the expensive expert "consultant's reports" written by consultants who agree to write what the city wants them to write in order to get politicians to "buy into" decisions favoured and already made by the bureaucrats.

All in all, politicians have no idea what is happening on the micro level in city hall and have to rely on senior officials for all information....and by selectively providing and withholding pertinent information, bureaucrats can effectively manage political decision making.

I recall a statement from a Director of Education who was asked to recount his frustrations at his Board of Trustees spending inordinate amounts of time discussing unimportant issues. "Frustrated? Hell no," he said, "If they waste all their time talking about those issues, they'll never get around to discussing the important stuff." What the Director implied with those words, of course, was his encouragement (and leadership) to keep non-vital issues in front of the Board so he was free to run the Education System without political interference. And of course Oshawa City Officials operate in the same way.

This is where we need strong political leadership to impose the council will despite the bureaucratic protests. Unfortunately, based on weak political leadership and inexperienced politicians, the present city council doesn’t seem to have the strength or will to grab control.

As policy setters, strong politicians can set policy for bureaucrats to implement and insure that it is followed. In terms of budgets and the resultant taxation levels, politicians can only approve tax cuts or increases and major expenditures. As a “show,” some politicians will suggest some cuts to simply show they are on top of the issue.

I’d like to point out examples of the “Strut of the Turkeys” budget deliberations by our present council to point out how the four principles of the Turkey Strut works in Oshawa but this is an impossible task, since nothing has been happening here on anything.

Hell, City Politicians haven't even figured out yet how to replace the disgraced Mike Nicholson who reneged on accepting his council seat after wnning the election because he found out he couldn't hold any elected office as a TTC bus driver. Good thing he isn't getting a chance to help run the "sometime complicated" issues confronting city business if he didn't know and understand that.

Because of the devoid of Oshawa City Council activity, I will have to look to Toronto examples which exist under the strong leadership of Mayor Rob Ford, who, in contrast to our new Oshawa Mayor, actually defined a platform during the election that people voted to accept. Winning on a defined platform, of course, gives the Toronto Mayor legitimacy in taking action to implement his platform. John Henry, in not having an election platform except for a few platitudes like “restoring trust,” “improving transparency and accountability,” and, “respect for the people” has had no real plan of action endorsed by the people.

In Step one of Toronto’s Annual ”Turkey Strut”, Mayor Ford called for funding cuts of 5% for all Toronto City departments and asked that all Departmental Budgets be produced reflecting that cut.

In Step two of the Toronto’s ”Turkey Strut”, Police Chief Bill Blair blared, “That’s impossible! We’ll have to cut 1200 police jobs!” he announced to a citizenry already concerned with crime and public safety even though Toronto crime rates have been decreasing for the last decade according to statistics. The poker faced chief knows he has to bluff when he only has a pair of deuces in his hand.

In response to questions of studies of required staffing numbers, he confirmed there’d been no staffing studies, and further that Toronto’s policing levels shouldn’t be compared to other Canadian Municipalities which don’t have Toronto’s problems but rather with similar sized Chicago which has twice the officers per capita and where every citizen has a constitutional right to carry a revolver in their pocket or purse.

Sure chief, Toronto, with its 59 homicides last year, should be compared to Chicago with its 458 in 2009. Right on Chief! Brilliant!

And by the way Chief, Canada is one of the safest countries in the world and Toronto is the safest city in North America---but hey Chief, in the turkey trot, you're expected to gobble up as much tax cash as you can to grow your department....whether you need the staff or not. It's the bureaucratic way!

In any case, Blair came out of a meeting with the Mayor beaming about a 2% increase to his budget during these times with a 12 month inflation rate of 1.9965%.

I guess the chief will not have to cut any fat, waste, or inefficiencies out of his department!

Toronto’s Library Board also defied the Mayor’s call for a 5% cut by asking for a 2.6% increase stating Ford’s cuts would mean reducing book purchases by 18,400 books and the closing of the City Hall Library Branch. Cutting books from the library’s $171M budget and closing the downtown city hall branch hits as close to the heart as possible without rendering the library system clinically dead and implies they are running a remarkably skimpy "no fat" system.

The Toronto Civic Administration also avoided a last minute 10¢ TTC fare increase by coming up with a magical $16M and the transit commission with another $8M to make up the $24M the fare increase would have raised. Now I wonder whether this magically found $16M came out of the fat and waste that was built into the city budget through the use of incremental tax increases which pad all built up fat and waste yearly by the incremental increase applying to every aspect of the budget including fat and waste. Even city officials have not been able to report where the extra $16 mill came from....Guess it's tough for them to say, "It's just part of the fat!" It is clear though that the $8M the TTC is expected to save does come from their padded fat and waste.

In any case, Politicians neither have the time, education, expertise, or knowledge of the many specialized functions within city hall to micromanage. The only effective thing they can do is cut funding which the city manager in turn would direct all his subordinate managers to do.

It’s only the Department Managers, who know where the fat and wastage is within their departments, but heretofore Public service bureaucrats have only been interested in growing the size of their departments since bottom line profitability or efficiency never enters the equation.

That is an aspect of government budget setting that has to change as we drag the bureaucrats kicking and screaming from their gold plated latté cups.

Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford, campaigned on the theme, "Stop the Gravy Train." With the points made above, Ford’s idea is meaningless unless he can demonstrate that he is extracting reduced revenues from the public and reducing the costs of government.

Announcing major tax cuts like the $60M auto registration tax is meaningless if the equivalent $60M is then extracted from the public by increasing user fees or saving the money through reducing staff and services.

The only way for Ford to stop the gravy train is to cut departmental budgets with the directive that there are no service cuts and no user fee increases.

Cutting costs by cutting service and staffing is easy and is what made then famous "Chainsaw" Jack Welch, former GE CEO a darling of the investment world. He forgot about improving profitability by increasing efficiencies, productivity, customer service, and new products and markets. Those keys to profitability are worshipped by the best CEO's just as improving efficiency and service should be hallmarks of excellent public administration.

Ford knows this, and it is only with reduced Toronto city overall expenditures without service cuts that Ford can demonstrate that he is bringing increased efficiency and productivity to civic administration by cutting out fat and waste.

The tax revolt in underway everywhere in North America and the people are demanding nothing less.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Hey! What are we getting for our tax money?

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
January 10, 2011


City taxpayers gambled on a new council, and so far it looks like we’ve elected duds. Even though we haven’t seen any leadership come from Mayor John Henry, we haven’t seen any initiatives come from any of the other council members either. It appears as if everyone so far is just sitting back waiting for something to happen. It's follow the leader without a leader!

Hell, we haven’t even had any disagreements or arguments or putdowns on council yet to lead to a little excitement. At least with the last council, we could expect frequent dissention at every meeting to provide for a little newsworthy comment.

So far, our Regional Councillors have each earned about $20,000 of our tax money and it is appropriate that taxpayers now have some kind of accounting of what we’ve gotten for this expenditure.

In the first ten weeks of this new council, the situation has to be classified as a zero-sum game----total political salaries and expenses = $176,925 (approximate), taxpayer’s benefit = 0. In zero sum parlance, this means that city politicians have so far in the 10 weeks of this new term cost city taxpayers approximately $176,925 and have not yet received a penny of value for these tax dollar expenditures.

Oh, Mayor John Henry has received his new Equinox, paid for out of his personal money as we’ve been told, and if this is so, he is to be congratulated. That is, of course, unless he simply pays for the car out of his weekly $100 minimum car allowance that he will arrange to at least give him the perk enjoyed by his fellow council members. Perhaps as mayor, he will have this car allowance ballooned to some higher level commensurate with his increased responsibility.

His Equinox, though, is a neat sleight of hand. He gets to business expense 30% annual depreciation on the car, write off any car loan interest, receives a 100% credit for the HST, receives a tax writeoff of 100% of all auto expenses, and an inflated tax free weekly gas allowance to pay for the car. Neat! He gets to play a hero looking after our tax dollars with the same net benefit to him----a free car!

He, along with his fellow council members will undoubtedly get their tanks topped up free at the city gas pumps that service all city vehicles. This would, of course, be in addition to the auto allowance that is supposed to fuel their vehicles. It would be an eye opener to see an accounting of all those who are able to use this fuel depot.

Saying as how Henry bought his own Equinox (yeah?), I guess he is entitled to decorate it however he wishes. I have heard a report that he has had a red maple leaf plaque with a blue “O” (for Oshawa) emblazoned on the red leaf. On a quick glance, I’m told that the crest looks surprisingly like the Federal Conservative Logo which is a blue “C” on a red leaf.

If this “crest story” is true, and I’d love to hear confirmation from someone who has seen the car, it does make sense for Henry to give credit to the Federal Conservatives and to the efforts of Oshawa Federal Conservative MP, Colin Carrie, whose campaign team, sign locations, and election machinery got John Henry elected.

Colin Carrie’s unprecedented level of meddling in Oshawa Municipal Elections was extremely unusual as politicians at one level do not typically meddle in the affairs of another level of government.

Carrie’s meddling in city politics is not a new revelation and has been reported in past “Eye on City Hall” columns.

But we are now learning amazing revelations that John Henry’s campaign manager, Mark Sheriff, has been appointed the Mayor’s Executive Assistant. Nothing surprising in that...except that Sherriff has just resigned as president of Colin Carrie’s Conservative Riding Association to take on Henry's Exec. Asst. job.

We now have all of the powers of the Oshawa Conservative Party installed in the Mayor’s Office willing and eager to have their chains yanked by Ottawa.

I had speculated in a past column that John Henry was personally recruited to run as a Mayoral Candidate by Colin Carrie and of Carrie’s strong connection with the Henry Campaign by his attendance at Henry’s side on election night as votes were being counted and his attendance at Henry’s private victory celebration at Downtown’s Thirsty Monk Restaurant following the victory. Now we know that the Henry Campaign was completely orchestrated by the Carrie election machinery and that Carrie was intimately involved right from the beginning. Carrie is Henry.....and Henry is Carrie...our Federal MP and our Mayor are one and the same. Dangerous!

With such an intimate connection between Carrie and Henry, there is sure to be no Federal/City disputes....that whatever Ottawa wants for Oshawa, it gets. Henry will endorse anything the Feds want for Oshawa, for example, the Federal / City Harbour Agreement to guarantee more industrial development at our lakefront. It doesn’t matter what the people want. It’s all part of a plan by Carrie to have Ottawa dictate city politics and policy for us.

None of this Conservative takeover is co-incidental but a well-organized plan. We know also that Carrie had a role in the election of Tito Dante Marimpietri and John Neal. A worthwhile question remains, which others of our new council members got the support of Carrie’s election machinery?....and why?

As a side note, I have it on good authority that the Woodstock Council had a significant turnover and that all members of that Council are now Federal Conservative Party Members.

Perhaps it is not too stretching to theorize, that Stephen Harper is making attempts to extend his electoral control across the country right down to the municipal level. After all, that would be consistent with his practise of exercising iron fisted control over Cabinet Members and his Conservative Caucus.

Perhaps Carrie’s meddling in Oshawa Affairs, and the apparent meddling in Woodstock’s Municipal Election, foretells a Harper Conservative Agenda to grab a tiller on all political affairs across the country. That would be dangerous for democracy, dissent, and an alternative voice. That could lead to G20 type policing fiascos across the country. It’s only in dictatorships where one guy pulls all the power.

In America, political organization by the Republican and Democratic Parties extends right down to the precinct (neighourhood level) and all political candidates for all offices at all levels run on the Republican or Democratic (or Independent) ticket with voters being largely identified at the neighbourhood level as registered Democrats or Republicans.

Is the Federal Conservative Party participation in Oshawa’s Municipal Election, orchestrated by Colin Carrie, part of Harper’s Grand scheme for the nation...to Americanize Canada politically and grab unfettered control by organizing Conservative Control right down to the city and neighbourhood level with local political offices being held by candidates chosen by the national party? With his strong arm control he’d be the “President” (or dictator) of our country.

We already know that Harper would like to Americanize our nation by cutting out Canada Pensions (which has recently been floated as a trial balloon), cutting out transfer payments for health care and higher education, and reducing the power of the Federal Government vis-a-vis the Provinces. As President, with neighbourhood control, he might have far greater control in reaching these objectives.

I have regularly reported politics as a game of pay-offs and deal-making for votes and of course personal ambition is never far from the surface.

The chattering classes in Oshawa have upped their volume in questioning John Henry’s honesty, transparency, and integrity in honouring his election pledges, particularly in respecting city voters which was a major campaign pledge.

They were particularly disappointed in Henry for nominating and voting for Roger Anderson as Regional Chair as Anderson was the chief proponent of the garbage incinerator being built on the city borders.

I have heard from an inside and reliable source that discussions will take place shortly to “re-balance” representation on Regional Council by the various member municipalities. This is a “given” as growing populations in Ajax, Pickering, and Whitby are under-represented relative to the slower growing Oshawa. Despite the imbalance, city representatives in the past have successfully resisted and staved off any reduction in Oshawa Regional Representation.

I have now been told by insiders that John Henry agreed to a “secret” deal to not oppose any reduction to Oshawa Regional Council representation as a trade-off for the overwhelming support he received for his prestigious $6000-$7000 seat on the Durham Police Commission. We’ll have to keep an eye on how this plays out.

Personal ambition in politics often trumps the public good. Stay tuned!

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

The City Budget---The first significant order of business

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
January 3, 2011



On this first column of 2011, while city politicians are still in a “Resolution Mood” for the New Year, I hope, along with the vast majority of city residents, that Council resolves to cut taxes at their upcoming budget deliberations in February.

High residential taxation was the number one concern of voters during the election campaign, and everyone elected promised in one way or another to hold the line on taxation levels.

The budget meetings will be a good start to assess the sacred trust city voters placed in the newly elected to honour their campaign pledges. Not one politician got elected based on a promise to raise taxes. All got elected on promises to cut or freeze taxes.

So the February budgetary process will be the first major item on the city council agenda and the first real indication of whether politicians will honour the commitments they made to city taxpayers in the October 25 Municipal Elections.

Early indications are that Mayor John Henry will not be honouring his pledge to put a hold on taxes. At a recent Regional Council Meeting, he led the charge in arguing for an 8% increase in the water/sewer rates.

Henry admonished fellow councillors who did not support the bureaucratic recommendation by rhetorically asking if anyone knew of a service more important than water and further if anyone had heard of the Walkerton E-Coli Tragedy.

As if increased expenditures would have avoided the Walkerton issue in which criminal convictions were issued against the two supervisors charged with irresponsibly carrying out their duties to insure water quality in Walkerton.

In terms of Henry’s first question...”Is there anything more important than water?” it appears that Henry is mistakenly convinced that money is the cure to all evils and that more money would have resulted in better supervision by those charged with insuring water quality. How naive!

Henry has also demonstrated by his reasoning that the key component in pricing a commodity value is how important it is to humanity. Using the same reasoning, he would place a great economic value on the air we breathe and thus, if he could find a way, want to tax it at a high rate.

His support for the incinerator on Oshawa’s border as demonstrated by his nomination and vote for Roger Anderson as Regional Chairman, the chief proponent of the incinerator, seems diametrically opposed to his concern for clean water and human health. Anderson’s incinerator will spew health damaging pollutants into the atmosphere and into the lungs of our children.

In supporting huge water/sewer rate increases, besides breaking his election pledges, John Henry is clearly falling into the trap of politicians who fall hook, line, and sinker into the slick bureaucratic sleight of hand that works to justify greater budgets every subsequent year. This is a stunt that the bureaucratic stunt meisters can pull off when politicians are not too bright!

In his campaign for Mayor, John Henry, pledged to justify all budget items on a line-by-line zero based budgeting process whereby every budget item had to be justified from the ground up.

This care in the budgeting process that he promised is certainly not evident in his unquestioning and unhesitating support of the bureaucratic appeals for the extra water/sewer cash.

In the first budget and taxing question he faced, John Henry abandoned his pledge for the line-by-line zero based process he promised.

Henry’s system would be time consuming but would replace the traditionally used incremental system where current allocations are based on a percentage increase over the totals of the past year. Only the percentage increase over the last year then becomes debatable under this system.

In abandoning the zero based budgeting system he pledged, and accepting the incremental system, he guarantees us a tax increase every year.

Henry calls himself a businessman who wanted to run the city like a business and yet he abandoned the most basic idea of business...that is of looking for increased efficiencies rather than simply throwing more money at a problem. Indeed the system Henry has now adopted continues to reward or pad all existing, present, and past inefficiencies with an agreed percentage increase. This acts to compound all tax excess problems that have accrued over the years. The excessive capital pools generated will, of course, be eaten up by unnecessary discretionary city hall spending.

Guaranteed percentage increases in budgetary items removes all incentive to cut out the city hall fat, waste, redundancies, and inefficiencies and continues to reward all those things that are an anathema to business practice that Henry pledged to stamp out.

If any internal efficiencies result in cost savings to produce a surplus in government accounts at the end of the year, there is a bureaucratic “rush” to spend the surplus to avoid any money being left in the till at year end.

Surplus monies left in an account is catastrophic to bureaucrats as it announces to politicians that too much money had been allocated in the past year and signals a need to cut allocations. This is to be avoided at all costs according to the bureaucratic mind-set.

As a public service administrator in my past life, I often received emergency “directives” from budget supervisors near year end to spend money....send requisitions for any furniture/equipment you want (not need) and we will cover the costs.

These supervisors wanted to break the bank in the current year with unneeded purchases to insure budgetary increases in the following year. After all, you can’t “require” increases next year if you’ve left money in the till this year.

This is a game all bureaucrats play which is quite in contrast to the private sector where wasteful expenditures cut “bottom line” profitability. In government service, there is no bottom line as bureaucrats are confident that politicians will always approve digging deeper into the taxpayer pocket to replenish empty public tills to fuel more out-of-control spending.

In business, with the business mind-set, there is incentive to cut waste, cut inefficiencies, and cut fat to improve profitability. In the public service, the mind-set is to do whatever it takes to increase costs and spending to insure a bigger budget in subsequent years, even if that means wasteful spending, decreasing efficiencies, and duplicate and redundant operations and procedures, and increasing bureaucracy.

A classic example of this wastefulness in Oshawa is the unnecessary creation of a heavily staffed and space-rich “Information Oshawa” department where you will see handsomely paid workers huddling in unproductive “chatting groups” on any city hall visit. There is one worker sitting at the front counter to handle simple public inquiries and otherwise to direct technical inquiries upstairs to departmental specialists.

For example, I stopped by one day, and as a political columnist for the Central Newspaper, asked for the Agenda Materials for the evening’s Council Meeting. I was told I’d have to go upstairs to the Clerk’s Department for that.

Similarly, any developer wanting more than mundane elementary information would be referred “upstairs” to the planning department. Such a generalist department as Information Oshawa may have blank forms to dispense but no detailed or expert advice or opinion...but a taxpayer cost of millions of dollars per year and an unnecessary waste endemic to public service but an anathema to private business.

Another wasteful expenditure, of course, was the $20M redevelopment of city hall. While a number of rationales for this wasteful expenditure were foisted on the public by the last council, none stuck and so politician’s settled on pegging the huge cost to the need to house this unneeded Information Oshawa.

Smart! A rationale for a wasteful $20 M city hall expenditure is tied to an unneeded and wasteful city department.

In short, the only way to guarantee a hold on city hall spending is to provide incentives for increasing efficiencies. This is only done by mandating small cuts to departmental budgets and then having departmental managers look for cost savings within their departments.

During the election campaign, I suggested all city hall departmental budgets should be cut by 3% to allow for a 3% residential tax cut. Every 1% tax cut would reduce city tax coffers by about $1M. A 3% tax cut would reduce the city’s $115M residential tax "take" by about $3.5M. This would be similar to taking $3.50 from you if you had $115 in your pocket.

That’s a cut you, I, and the city could live with. We’d do it by cutting out unnecessary and frivolous spending...just as the city would!

We need some demanding political leaders, though, as these cuts would only come as the city bureaucrats were dragged kicking and screaming from their gold plated latté cups.


Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Council Resolutions for the New Year...Do they have any?

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
December 27, 2010

When Mayor John Henry got elected on October 25, 2010, just about two months ago, stealing a line from Barack Obama, he brazenly promised us 100 days of action.

So far we’ve had 60 days of inaction and so the Mayor better get on his high horse and whip up some action to avoid disappointing Oshawa voters. He’s only got 40 days left of those 100 days and so far not a damn thing has happened!

Shortly after the election, Henry stated, “This city is poised for greatness and I’m excited to get started.” For a guy anxious to get started, he sure is slow off the mark.

He said Council was going to start to work on a vision statement once the term of council got underway. With those sixty days already gone, we haven’t heard anything more about the city vision statement. So far city council seems leaderless and rudderless. Hopefully there is more to Henry’s leadership than a few glibly uttered quickly forgotten words.

In Toronto, the new Mayor Rob Ford, whether you like him or not, has gone about business like a bull in a china shop.

In the first few days of his mandate, he announced expense account cuts for city councillors, announced a cancellation of the vehicle registration tax saving Toronto taxpayers $60M, announced initiatives to declare the TTC an essential service to prohibit employee strikes, filled all of the committee chairs with his chosen appointees, scrapped Metrolinks “Transit City” plans for street level light rail transit lines in favour of subways and elevated transit lines...and all of this was done within days of assuming office.

In Oshawa, committee chairs/vice chairs were decided at a private meeting convened by Nancy Diamond in return for block voting for Roger Anderson as Regional Chair as speculated in one of my recent Central columns.

In the only bit of Council business in these first 60 days, city council on a motion by Nancy Diamond voted to receive and file Mayor John Henry’s only initiative so far, that was to assign city wide councillors to ward responsibilities...a deft sleight of hand by Henry who voted to remove ward councillors with his consistent support for the general vote and the election of city-wide councillors.

It’s amazing that council utterly rejected Henry’s first and only initiative in these first 60 days, when he had promised to move the earth and the sky during his first 100 days in office.

So much for empty words....hopefully we’ll get some action soon or Oshawa is in for a very long and fruitless four year council term.

Henry did not really present a platform in the election campaign but did give some vague statements about respect for voters, transparency, spending restraint, and keeping a firm hold on taxation.

He has yet to present any real vision for the direction he wants to take this city. Guess he’s just going to have the city drift along with the wind.

In terms of respect for taxpayers, there have been many reports of him failing to reply to telephone calls, emails and text messages sent to him....all things he seemed quite diligent about prior to his election as Mayor. Maybe now that he has reached the pinnacle of his political career, he feels he can disregard communication with the voters.

In terms of holding the line on taxation, John Henry was vocal in attacking fellow Regional Councillors who didn’t support 8% increases in water and sewer rates.

With this flagrant disregard for the principles he espoused leading up to his election, I shudder to think about city tax increases resulting from the city budget council will approve in February.

Henry has made so little impact as Mayor of Oshawa that Durham Region Chair, Roger Anderson, in a recent Freudian slip mistakenly referred to Councillor Nancy Diamond as Mayor Diamond, perhaps in a not so subtle reference to Mayor John Henry’s weak leadership.

Perhaps by way of a not so subtle editorial comment, some enterprising entrepreneur has started selling T shirts emblazoned “Shwatarded.”

And hell, I was hoping the election of our new council would start to change the reputation of this city!

May I wish all my readers a wonderful Christmas Season and a Healthy and Prosperous 2011.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people"---Oh yeah!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
December 20, 2010


Everyone in the free world treasures the thought in Abraham Lincoln’s eloquent Gettysburg Address, “That Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall (should) not perish from the earth,"

In looking out at our current world, though, it is easy to believe that Lincoln’s thought would have been more accurate had he deleted the descriptor “for the people” from his speech.

With the memories of police action in Toronto during the recent G20 summit in which police brutality was widely evident, with as yet, no serious discipline being meted out to those responsible, I came to think about two wildly competing ideas about our system of government and the contrasts with what we see all too often.

We have a government by the people for the people as those words would have us believe....but often upon the assumption of power, the high ideals of that famous statement often run off the rails.

Honesty is lost, deception is rife, and personal ambition and entitlements become the order of the day.

Too some extent we are seeing this in Oshawa with the promises by some politicians being discarded so early in this council term.

We are all familiar with the statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely which was first written in 1887 by Lord Acton who opposed Pope Pius IX’s 1870 promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility ultimately causing a split in the church.

Acton wrote, "I cannot accept your idea that we should judge Pope and King different from ordinary men with a presumption that they can do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.

With some exceptions, the truth of those words seem to apply increasingly to the governing classes in this modern world.

In order to enjoy the perks of power, which in this modern age seems in every way to rob from the poor to give to the rich, and to some degree is creating a police state not so different from those we’ve been taught to despise.

Wikipedia describes a police state as one in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.

The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement.

Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.

As for the totalitarianism mentioned as a characteristic of a police state, how is that much different from the one man show being carved out by the current prime minister when even most of his cabinet ministers have to seek out permission of the PMO to utter a few words to the press.

And the definition given implies social control over mobility of people and political expression. Were these not witnessed by the corralling of citizens and the subsequent police thuggery over many of those corralled during the recent G20 summit? And weren’t all ”security” actions ultimately under the direction of the PMO?

The police state implies the use of Secret police, a police agency which operates in secrecy to protect the power and authority of a political regime or state.

Secret police forces are associated with authoritarian regimes, as they are, by definition, used to support the political power of an individual government or regime rather than upholding the common rule of law.

A police state???? Didn’t we have secret laws about arrests within 5 metres of the G20 perimeter fence and arrests for failing to produce personal identification to the police upon demand? And weren’t these police “secret” in that their faces were covered by eerie one way masks and many with their names and police numbers removed from their uniforms so they couldn’t be identified and thus could get away with illegal assaults in the name of ensuring the level of control demanded by the authorities? A police state indeed!

Instead of transparently enforcing the rule of law and being subject to public scrutiny as ordinary police agencies do, secret police organizations are specifically intended to operate beyond and above the law in order to suppress political dissent through clandestine acts of terror and intimidation . This sure sounds like many of the G20 policing actions to me.

Striking fear in the minds of its citizens is common to all authoritarian regimes. It has been ever thus and since time began, citizens have always had to work to keep authorities in check.

Citizen rebellion seems to be a growing trend in the free world and even in dictatorial regimes, citizen safety has been often discarded in favour of fighting for freedom.

Those in power in many quarters of the world use their public positions as much for their own benefits as well as for the benefits of the governed.

Even in these tough economic times with high number of job terminations, the tough times never seem to affect those in the public service. With 8-10% unemployment in the Province, the Provincial Government has recently announced a heavy hand to stamp out public servant’s golf and health club memberships and undocumented travel expenses.

Being at the top of the Provincial food chain, the Provincial Government is putting a clamp on public servant’s excesses but I’m wondering if they are now going to limit their own giant excesses at the public trough.

Entitlements are rampant at every level...The Regional “Entry by Invitation Only” Inaugural Meeting at which food fancies were undoubtedly served to the invitees at taxpayer expense is a classic example. Hell, food and refreshments are even served to Oshawa City Councillors at the 8 pm Council pee break while those footing the bill are left in the council chambers awaiting the return of the blessed.

At the Federal Level, even the Prime Ministership seems an entitlement to Stephen Harper. Why else would he proroque parliament when his party was about to lose a non-confidence vote? This action was against all democractic traditions of our parliamentary system.

Without proroguing parliament that first time, he wouldn’t have been able to do it the second time a year later so that his parliamentary responsibilities would not interfere with his enjoyment of the Olympics, which cost taxpayers $90,000 for return air flights alone, every time Harper decided to fly to Vancouver to see a hockey game.

If this is government of the people by the people and for the people, how come it is the office holders who enjoy themselves with all of the expensive perks and entitlements of office that we, the common citizen, are paying for at an average of $1.3M yearly for every MP and Senator, about $500M in total. Government for the people...for sure!

But hey....this travesty just doesn’t happen here. It happens everywhere no matter what the form of government. Rulers everywhere stash all the jewels of governing.

Look at the British Government that has served its people by tripling university tuitions to £9000 ($14250 Canadian) to keep all of the ordinary slobs from good education and good jobs thus retaining these for the snobbish monied class. After all, the class systems in Britain do have to be maintained to keep everyone in their place, as the Lords and Ladies do require “working people” to serve their every need.

No wonder this service of giant tuition fee increases for the people rustled up protests and riots among the working classes who see the actions of the politicians as keeping the “rude classes” in their place.

And then, just to rub salt in the wounds, Tuxedo Clad Prince Charles and his bejewelled, but less than prim and proper wife, the former Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles, but now Princess of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay and Countess of Chester took through the mobs in the streets in their Chauffered Vintage Rolls Royce to attend a Royal Variety Show at the Royal Palladium, a show no doubt paid for by ordinary taxpayers who no doubt were barred from attending the show.

Maybe Charles and Camilla drove through the jeering mobs just wanting to get a sympathetic idea of the plight of ordinary people. But hell, these ordinary people screaming “off with their heads” were so upset with the way the government “for the people” served them, Charles and Camilla were lucky to get out of there alive. They wouldn’t have in earlier ages. The vintage car though had windows smashed, doors kicked in and got splattered with paint bombs.

Probably for the first time in their lives, these privileged “royals” were reduced to fearful everybodies fearing for their futures just as most common folk do every day.

This ruffling of the Royal feathers reduced these haughty, contemptuous, and pretentious “royals,” used to burning through the common folk taxes to fund their every activity, from their pompous, aloof, and imperilous waves and smiles, through the bullet proof windows of their vintage Rolls, to the level of real people with real concerns confronting real people every day of their existence.

Yes there are risks associated with governing and we’re seeing this throughout Europe and America with its Tea Movement, and even in places like China where people’s voices are screaming, “We want a government to serve us.”

Perhaps that was the reason we had a record change in local government here in Oshawa...and City Council better pay attention!

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Signs of the devolution of democracy and freedom surround us

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
reprinted from Oshawa Central Newspaper
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
December 13, 2010

There are many attacks on our democracy and freedoms, these cherished rights won by countless struggles, countless persecutions, countless wars, and countless deaths going back over the centuries.

Democracy and freedom are devolving on many fronts at home at the very time our soldiers are fighting and dying, as they’ve done on many fronts, to bring these human rights to people as they’re doing in Afghanistan today.

All citizens have a responsibility to work to preserve our freedoms….to monitor the actions of governments at all levels….and to speak out when they feel the rights of Canadians are being compromised. Losses of freedom can come imperceptibly slowly causing disastrous results….and once lost, are hard to be regained. Just ask the East Germans and citizens of the other Eastern European Countries.

This was brought close to home once again by a group of Oshawa Citizens, led by Bill Steele, who wanted to watch the initiation meeting of Durham Regional Council last Wednesday.

The meeting was in the Regional Council Chambers, a public meeting in a publicly owned hall in which the public is ordinarily entitled to attend.

Steele and the other citizens were interested to watch the vote for Regional Chair, the most powerful regional position, which is appointed, rather than elected. They were also interested in viewing the votes for leadership of the various regional committees whose important role it is to perform the preliminary review, and hold hearings, and discussions in order to recommend action to Regional Council.

The Oshawa assemblage wanted to witness their elected representatives’ votes for Regional Chair since this is the same group that strongly and verbally supported John Mutton for Chair. They had also supported most elected Regional Politicians from Oshawa in anticipation of their support for Mutton.

They were gravelly disappointed as all Oshawa votes went to Anderson. He was even nominated by Oshawa Mayor, John Henry, for the job.

Henry had not previously disclosed his vote but probably felt compelled to vote Anderson for fear of alienating the powerful Nancy Diamond alliance who had met privately a few weeks ago divvying up Council Committee Chairmanships in return for their Anderson votes. There will probably be the same payoffs at the Regional Level for the Anderson supporters.

All of the foregoing just demonstrates the power of the backrooms despite all of the elected politicians campaigned on a promise of transparency and accountability. It’s amazing how politician’s personal ambitions interfere with promises they make to people during elections.

Steele, and the other Oshawa supporters, were denied entry to the “public” meeting. It is unclear at the time of writing whether there were “Standing Regional Policies” denying access to inaugural meetings, or whether special orders were given for this day because of the extraordinary interest generated by the “contested” run at the Regional Chair position by “outsider,” John Mutton, who ran an ambitious campaign to oust Roger Anderson. Anderson has served in the powerful position ever since being defeated as a Regional Councillor 13 years ago.

While visitors were barred from this Regional Meeting, they are entitled, subject to available space, to view Canada’s Federal Parliament from the public gallery.

Access to special meetings like the “Speech from the Throne, that signifies the opening of every new Parliamentary Session is denied even to Members of Parliament who must cluster in the small alcove just inside the Senate Doors, since by British tradition, the House of Lords is only accessible to the Nobility...or in Canada, those “nobles” so anointed as Senators. Maybe this inaugural Regional Meeting had that significance---and thus common folk were denied entry!

All citizens have a responsibility to work to preserve our freedoms….to monitor the actions of governments at all levels….and to speak out when they feel the rights of Canadians are being compromised. Losses of freedom can come imperceptibly slowly causing disastrous results….and once lost, are hard to be regained….and so we commend Bill Steele for his leadership on this.

News reports of the last week indicate several threats to other aspects of our freedoms and democracy which depend so much on access to information provided by investigative reporting of a free and independent press.

Recently, we had the wikileaks releases. None of the releases indicated any “top secret” information like weaponry or other strategic technology in development, or any military deployment or strategy secrets, or details on the existence of any spy networks, or any secret economic strategies potentially to be implemented to retain American worldwide economic dominance, etc. They did seem to release a lot of “name calling” much as you’d find around the office water cooler. While there were some embarrassments, there were no earth shattering revelations.

The inventory of documents were provided weeks in advance of their wikileaks.com release to The New York Times, Britain's Guardian, Der Spiegel in Germany, El Pais in Spain and France's Le Monde all of which participated in simultaneous publication of some of the more enlightening details of the “so called” secret communications.

Governments claim to operate with transparency and accountability and one of the main functions of newspapers is investigative reporting to insure this, and they are guaranteed “Freedom of the Press” to report fact and opinion to do just that. In this internet age, the journalistic freedom of fair comment and opinion has been extended by the courts to bloggers and other forms of online reporting.

Much of what has so far been released by wikileaks is far less damaging to governments than we find in major newspapers, magazines, or on television newscasts any day.

The media functions, in part, to ensure an informed public to allow us to retain our freedoms and control and keep the actions of government in check. Otherwise politicians and governments could run wild. Everywhere the press is muzzled, freedoms are lost.

And yet, wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, founder and spokesman for wikileaks, whose personal philosophy is in opposition to secrecy-based, authoritarian conspiracy governments, obviously, like you and I, and many in the conventional press, supports more openness and transparency of governments worldwide….he believes in freedom of the press, no censorship, and investigative reporting---not at all radical ideas.

The powerful, though, have now had him imprisoned without bail on trumped up charges for his apparent consensual sex in Sweden, the land of free love. Such is the price for his release of documents embarrassing to the American Government.

This co-operation of governments is striking in that governments oftentimes fail to co-operate on the return of suspected criminals for quite serious charges. I guess there are extra pressures to co-operate with governments that have been embarrassed.

Around the world, political prisoners are imprisoned for speaking out against authoritarian regimes.

Assange’s release of the documents is not near as radical as calls for his assassination like Republican Rep. Peter King of New York who stated that Assange should be charged and terminated under the Espionage Act, Sarah Palin who called him an anti-American operative with blood on his hands, and past Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee who called for him to be tried for treason and executed, and former Top Aide to Stephen Harper, Tom Flanagan, who called for his assassination on a CBC political talk show in which he said, President Obama should take out a contract on Assange.

One outraged Canadian citizen flew off an email to Flanagan objecting to his remarks at which Flanagan’s immediate email response was, “Better be careful. We know where you live”.

Maybe this kind of communication is acceptable from a Prime Minister who prorogues Parliament when he is in danger of losing control or when Parliament would endanger his enjoyment of the Olympics. But I figure Parliament is a place that serves us and represents Canada’s values, neither of which were shown by these actions by Harper or Flanagan.

In term of citizen’s freedoms, the US has even threatened government job loss to those who read the wikileaks documents.

All of these government actions threaten our freedoms and our democracy and we all have to be diligent in protecting our hard won rights at every turn. Societies have suffered where their rights have been compromised.

A most serious challenge to our rights was confirmed this past week by Ontario Ombudsman, Andre Marin, who released his report entitled “Caught in the Act” regarding policing violence during the G20 summit. Marin exposed what he called “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian History” and which he further defined as “likely unconstitutional.”

While the Premier hardlined initially on the police actions, after the media reporters wrote what most of us knew from the outset, the Premier belatedly admitted that the G20 law he invoked was not likely in keeping with the balance of public safety and freedom of expression that he would want to strike. Let’s hope not, as the policing thuggery and the high profile world wide television coverage gave Canada a black eye that will take a long time to erase. And Canada is not alone in the "free world" in actions of police brutality.

And then we got the largely incorrect election backroom musings by the Oshawa Newspapers about their election choices which would best serve their city advertising revenues. While their backroom musings were hugely wrong in terms of politicians actually chosen by the people, they did, in all likelihood, tilt the balance towards those elected. Their role in the election was undemocratic and wrong---their unbalanced and biased reporting worked to influence public opinion rather than doing polling to report on public opinion which is the approach of all professional news organizations.

Newspapers which take this approach miss the important historic role of journalism by being simply propagandists for the politicians. Such reporting is a danger to democracy which depends upon an accurately and fairly informed public.

But hey, there’s still a twinkling of democracy here in Oshawa. Council in its first meeting turned down John Henry’s idea of assigning politicians to wards in something Henry defined as a “Community of Interest,” an action contrary to every principle of democracy we know, the right of voters to choose their own representatives. Hopefully Henry’s idea is now trashed and confined to the dumpster where it belonged.

And hopefully Mayor John Henry has brighter ideas to advance for the governing of Oshawa in the future.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

You broke the election system….now fix it right!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
December 6, 2010


On Monday, December 6, at the first council meeting of the new term, city council will be considering John Henry’s idea to introduce a concept he calls “community of interest” to assign councillors to look after constituency concerns of the various city neighbourhoods.

This is an attempt to distribute the constituency workload among the various councillors and to make sure that every neighborhood has a voice at the council table.

In other words, Henry’s idea is to institute a plan to re-introduce the ward representation that he voted to eliminate.

This is a rather asinine suggestion not at all keeping with democratic principles of representative government whose basic principle is that voters determine their own representatives.

The idea of assigned representatives suggests a movement away from democracy and a move toward a system where the autocratic elite divide the spoils among themselves…they divvy up the political landscape in backroom deals and decide who is going to represent the people. This is wrong and the complete antithesis of everything we know about democracy. It is more like the warlords divvying up the spoils in Afghanistan, much of Asia and the Middle East, and many parts of Africa and South America.

We have not seen this kind of feudal governing in the free world since the bishops, on behalf of the people, wrested absolute power from the British Kings close to one thousand years ago with the signing of the Magna Carta.

The real question if John Henry wants to re-introduce the semblance of ward representation is why he voted to eliminate it in the first place? Does he only now realize that he made an error? Or was his vote, as a “still wet behind the ears” “green political pup” highly influenced by the Council power brokers like Gray, Pidwerbecki, and Kolodzie that he wanted to please? Did he not understand the issue? If he did, did he not have the honesty and integrity to vote for what he knew to be right?

He should have been paying more attention to my presentations to council where I identified all of the short comings that have since materialized. He was so disinterested in what I had to say, or indeed under pressure from the power brokers on council, that he voted every time to deny me opportunity to provide him and council additional information.

John Henry and his council bosses didn’t want to expose my damaging information to the public any more than they had to for fear of it upsetting the self-serving plans they had to introduce the system not used in any large city in the country.

And what is more, the city newspapers, probably also under the influence of city politicians, in fear of jeopardizing their handsome city hall advertising contracts, were irresponsible in not taking up the communication and information mantle abolished by city hall. The Oshawa Times, in contrast, a Thompson Newspaper Chain Daily, unfortunately shuttered due to a labour dispute in 1994, featured my battles for ward elections on their front page almost every day for four years.

In supporting the move to the general vote, Pidwerbecki suggested that ward voting meant that politicians were only interested in their own wards to the exclusion of all others. His other assertion was that Oshawa was “just too large for ward voting,” an abject insult to the intelligence of Oshawa voters.

The idea of parochial politicians is a red herring that has been floated about by the opponents of ward voting, mostly the CAW and CAW retirees, even prior to 1985 when I brought ward politics to the city with the work of my “Ward System Now” political action group. At that time, Cliff Pilkey, former city councillor, MPP, city resident, and president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, took out giant ads in the newspapers denouncing ward voting.

As former manager of NDP Leader, Ed Broadbent’s Oshawa Constituency Office, Pidwerbecki is now the chief city council spokesman for the Labour Movement and thus took a leading role, in strategizing Oshawa’s return to the General Vote.

The auto workers union and the union movement has traditionally been against ward voting since it divides their city wide union membership reducing CAW and CAW retirees influence in the running of this city.

If Pidwerbecki was right about parochialism of councillors, the general vote didn’t improve the problem. Rather, it gave the city a more unequal concentration of political power.

The recent elections produced 3 reps in each of wards 3 and 4, 2 reps in ward 6 (both in the same political polling subdivision), one rep each in wards 1, 5, and 7, and none in ward 2…too bad ward 2 and the other underserviced wards, you don’t have many votes representing your interests at the council table…but congratulations 3 and 4, according to Pidwerbecki, with your combined majority vote, you’ll have parochial politicians looking after your every whim, and each of you has as much power now as the combined power of more than half the city (4 out of 7 city wards).

For Henry to assign ward responsibility to councillors, because of the unequal representation elected, he will have to assign responsibility to some that is outside their residential communities. Of course, no matter how wards are assigned, you can never dismiss the fact that all politicians will be more in tune with the needs of their home communities and more interested in delivering service there.

A major problem with the assignment of wards is that politicians will not be accountable to the residents of the wards assigned. Politicians are only held accountable by the vote and are not held accountable to voters of any single community in a city wide vote. Even when ward responsibilities are assigned, politicians will still demonstrate more interest and expertise in their home communities, perhaps giving second class lip service to the assigned communities they are less interested in.

The bottom line is that, because of low voter turnout, the plebiscite result was not binding on council.

Nevertheless, council members argued that the vote had to be honoured as the “will of the people.”

Council failed to consider its very flawed plebiscite process that denied voters the opportunity to understand and debate the issue. They did not provide any documentation to households explaining the meaning of the question, what it would mean to voting and council representation in the city, or why the question was asked.

Worst of all, they schemed to catch voters “cold” in the voting booth with a question they didn’t understand, had never heard or considered, and worded in a difficult and convoluted way compelling voters to vote “NO” to retain a system they were happy with since no public concern had ever been publicly raised about ward voting.

In short, politicians asked an unnecessary question, and then rigged the question and the process to trick the people into voting for the system preferred by the politicians.

The question of an accurate measure of the “will of the people” is highly suspect. It is clear though, that if council wanted an accurate measure of that “will,” they would have insured an informed electorate. Because they failed to inform the people, they showed they didn’t care!

With council’s arguments to implement general elections as the expressed “will of the people,” it would now be extremely unethical for them to introduce John Henry’s assigned ward responsibilities as that is inconsistent with the reasons they forwarded for implementing the general vote.

Are they now going to reject what they adamantly called the “will of the people?”

Council must complete the present term under the election system they signed up for and they must honor any increased workload that results in representing the entire city. They argued before that citizens wanted to vote for all and be represented by all at council. It is too late to change the rules of the game.

John Henry’s ludicrous "community of interest" idea should be abandoned and council should mount a giant communication program to fully inform the people during this term. Following the information campaign, they should conduct an online poll, supplemented by mail in ballots for those who prefer, to get a true measure of the voting system the people want with a promise to introduce that system for the 2014 election.

The election system has to be fixed this term…and any attempts by John Henry or Council to postpone fixing the system with Henry’s plan which is rife with faulty logic and an affront to democracy will not serve this city well.

Henry’s system will only perpetuate the problems we’ve seen with Oshawa’s system of voting not used in any large city in the country.

Any attempt to assign political responsibility to communities misses the vital democratic components of choice of representation and political accountability to the represented group.

Don’t put off the problem…fix it now…and fix it right!

POSTSCRIPT---Thank goodness. Common sense prevailed and city council voted, on a motion from former Mayor Nancy Diamond, to receive and file the staff report seeking direction on Mayor John Henry's "Communities of Interest" Idea. This effectively puts an end to the idea. It is significant that Council did not support Henry's first leadership initiative as Mayor. Wonder what this forebodes in the future for Henry's leadership.

Hopefully a condensed form of this column sent to all council members on the morning of the vote and the full version of the column available to them by the time of the vote had some influence in their decision.

Now we just have to get council on board to organizing an information campaign and an online vote to get citizen approval for returning to ward voting for 2014.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/

Santa Claus has come to town…Made a List and is Checking it Twice!

“Eye on City Hall”
A column of Information, Analysis, Comment, and unfiltered opinion
Bill Longworth, City Hall Reporter
November 29, 2010


You better watch out. You better not cry. Better not pout. I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town.

And Santa did just that last Saturday night accompanied by hundreds of volunteer citizens in the parade all of whom thrilled the thousands of children and their voter parents who watched the parade.

All was joyous with the bands, the lighted floats, the colourful costumes, and the many excited children and happy faces both participating in the parade and watching it.

While I didn’t see any tears, I did hear some complaints from many quarters that no city politicians outside of Mayor Elect John Henry were in the parade. Henry walked with Colin Carrie and Jerry Ouellette as part of the Local Conservative Entourage.

This is the first time in living memory that the parade has not been swarmed by city politicians. “A very sad and alarming concern for the well-being of Oshawa,” stated one citizen. Had this parade been just before the election, you can bet your booty that we’d have every one of the 70 candidates on the ballot participating in the parade.

According to one citizen, the entire new council should have been walking behind the Official Town Crier who could have announced their presence. As it was, the Town Crier walked alone in the parade with nothing to Cry About, except the disappointing lack of presence of those expected to be in the parade…but he certainly didn’t want to rain any tears on Santa’s joyous arrival in town.

But to be fair to all of our city politicians, every good little boy and girl knows that they have to be asleep for Santa’s arrival with his bag full of goodies, so maybe all of our politicians were asleep dreaming about the good fortune of their close to $1/2M windfall for Regional Councillors over their four year council term.

While Mayor Elect Henry has been silent on the many important issues facing this city, he has made one policy pronouncement.

He wants to run the city like a business and thus has stated that politicians should be on rotating “on call” shifts for the weekends, perhaps the first step in making city politics a 9-5 job.

So perhaps Henry’s pronouncement about weekend political work being scheduled “on-call” was the reason no other city politicians were in the parade. It was a Saturday Night and they weren’t scheduled to work. And besides, maybe Henry only scheduled himself in for this very auspicious Saturday night event.

It is interesting, despite Henry’s pronouncement about scheduled weekend work, that no politician besides Henry showed up at this very visible event so there must have been some planning, discussion or organization to this political truancy.

Anyway, Politicians, with the Mayor’s blessing and encouragement, can now consider themselves part of the city hourly work force. And maybe politicians boycotting the parade were “working to rule” since it didn’t pay “time and a half” for work on a Saturday night.

With all the important policy decisions waiting in the wings for clues as to incoming mayor John Henry’s leadership---his Regional Chair vote, the public health damaging incinerator being built on our doorstep, our high taxes, the expanded 407 highway terminating at Simcoe, the student housing issue, lakefront development challenged by the ethanol plant, the railway spur line and increased industrialization of our harbour area, downtown renewal, getting city debt under control, etc. John Henry’s first policy pronouncement was rotating weekend shifts for city politicians….amazing…but then a guy does have to set his priorities. .

It speaks volumes that the first priority of mayor was introducing reduced workload benefits to politicians rather than policy focuses for better city government and a better Oshawa future---not policy direction for the city but more “time-off” entitlements for politicians…and I thought we’d had enough of this.

Besides, with rotating weekend workloads, politicians can carve out schedules that meet their other commitments like pursuing educational studies (Amy England)…hopefully not at taxpayer expense, running a business (John Henry), driving a Toronto Transit Commission Bus (Mike Nicholson), working on the Hospital Foundation (Tito Dante Marimpietri), or selling Real Estate (Roger Bouma).

England, at $100,000 per year will be making twice as much as those professors instructing her on how to have more success with a degree.

Anyway, Santa’s making a list. He’s checking it twice. He’s gonna find out who's naughty and nice!

And Santa is quite displeased that the newly elected politicians didn’t attend as visible “thanks” for the votes they garnered. As one citizen, a former city employee commented, “Participation in the parade was always seen as a team building exercise---city staff, city residents who participated in the parade, and the politicians and city merchants, businesses and volunteer organizations, etc., the many facets of this city that work together to mount the parade.”

Santa is also disturbed that those politicians on the public dole for many years, who weren’t returned didn’t show up as a vote of thanks to the citizens for the lucrative employment they’ve enjoyed over their terms on council.

Long time councillors, like Brian Nicholson, enjoyed a virtual lifetime career garnering close to $2M in earnings in his 20 years of employment. He might also have been there, along with all of the other defeated and retiring politicians to thank the taxpayer for their windfall severance allowance in all likelihood exceeding $100,000 for many of those not returning.

With Ontario’s largest council turnover reaching a lofty 64% of the past council, the retiring allowances to city politicians may cost city taxpayers in excess of $1M.

I have requested these retiring allowances for all defeated and retiring politicians but have been told by city hall that I will either have to file and pay for a freedom of information disclosure or wait for the figures to be released in February.

Politicians like April Cullen, dealt taxpayers a double whammy. She not only gets her windfall retiring allowance, she retired with her taxpayer funded MBA which qualified her for a job as an instructor at Durham College…quite a step up from the clerical work she did prior to election to city council, probably based on the well-known “Cullen” name in these parts although she is no relation to the well-known family.

Election, of course, even in these days would be a breeze if your name was Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, or Albert Einstein, even if your intellect bore no resemblance to these historic figures. The name George W. Bush would probably even get you elected to city council. It’s a political asset to have a name that is already “branded”….just like Campbell’s Soup. We all know that some of our less astute voters believe that Barack Obama is our head of government.

Santa Claus is coming to town. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good. So be good for goodness sake!

As one City Voter said, “All I want for Christmas...Is our newly elected mayor and regional councilors to follow through on their election promises.”

Virtually all politicians campaigned for increased city hall transparency, openness, accountability, and getting a grip on escalating taxes, and for voters to have a larger voice in decision making. Mayor Elect Henry, in his campaign literature, phrased it as restoring respect for taxpayers and accountability at City Hall.

Santa will know if politicians are being bad or good in honouring their election pledges. Private meetings to organize block voting for retaining John Anderson as Regional Chair and organizing private meetings to trade off Regional Chair votes in return for support for Committee Chairs will just not cut it with Santa….so be good for goodness sakes. Santa is keeping a list and has noted some serious slipups already.

In a recent news article in the local press, Henry was quoted as stating, "Taking office on Dec. 6 will mark a new era of accountability and transparency in which “the blame stops here.”

We’ll see! We still do not know his positions on any of the important issues facing this city….but we do know that he supports putting his fellow city council members on a businesslike rotating “on call” weekend work schedule.

Santa will be watching and will simply leave a bag of coal four years hence to those elected who do not measure up to the “good” standard Santa expects from all the world’s little boys and girls.

Be sure to follow Bill’s radio broadcasts, “Eye on City Hall”,
every Monday, 6-9 pm EST, on http://www.ocentral.com/thewave/