Budget drama sets stage for bigger battles to come: Keenan
Toronto’s annual budget process is the most important and fascinating time to watch city council. It was during all-night public budget meetings that things first started souring for former mayor Rob Ford, and it was a budget amendment passed over his objections that began a council tradition of disregarding his agenda.
But it isn’t just interesting to watch for the occasional bit of high drama. It’s fascinating because if you can look past the math in those ordered columns, the budget is a window into everything the city does. By necessity, it is a more honest view of Toronto’s priorities than our high-minded speeches ever can be.
The budget is the document that allows everything else to happen — if we’re spending money as a city, it has to be in the budget. Which means we can talk as much as we want about taxes or housing or transit being important to us, but we can look at the budget to see the truth. If it ain’t in the budget, it’s just talk.
This year’s budget process, which kicks off this week, is particularly significant for three people at city hall. The numbers we see unveiled on Tuesday when the first draft is presented to the budget committee will be the last prepared by outgoing city manager Joe Pennachetti, who ran budgets as chief financial officer even before taking his current job.
Because our current mayor and council just took office in December, and the budget has been under construction since last summer, the document that gets passed in a couple months will be more Pennachetti’s work than any politician’s. The aim, as with all election-year budgets, is to have a basic groundwork budget that changes very little about the status quo, while providing nods in the direction the new mayor and council want to move in the coming years.
Unlike in some previous years, Penachetti will begin by presenting a plan for a balanced budget, with the customary “budget gap” already resolved by his proposals, allowing for a minimum of wrangling and drama.
But there will be wrangling and drama, of course. Council is a diverse group with sometimes diametrically opposed ideas about what the city’s priorities should be, and anything that’s presented will draw fire for not providing enough of something — enough spending on bike lanes or homeless shelters, or enough tax cuts or spending cuts. The most moderate of budgets — which we might expect this to be — is likely to draw criticism from both ends of the spectrum.
Managing that criticism and the demands for changes that come with it is the job of brand-new budget chief Gary Crawford. I have unkindly written before about his appointment, because in his single previous term on city council I thought his distinguishing characteristic was that as a politician he made a great painter. But now the expectations or opinions of people like me are irrelevant; now, he gets to define himself.
“I have a lot of friends just now,” he told me the other day, as everyone on council wants to have his ear. How many friends he has left come spring will define his likelihood of success in years to come. The budget chief needs to be a salesman and negotiator, convincing his colleagues and the public of the wisdom of the plan before them, while also figuring out the tweaks needed to make it better.
Of course he does this on behalf of the new mayor who appointed him, John Tory, who has never been through a process like this at city hall in any capacity. Despite this being a caretaker budget, Tory will want it to include significant nods to the priorities he’s laid out — research money for SmartTrack, new funding for more TTC bus service, some funding for anti-homelessness initiatives, and dollars for his traffic calming measures. On top of that, he’ll expect to keep to his promised inflation-or-lower tax increase. Expect Pennachetti’s draft to have all of those built in.
The aim here for all three men will be to pass a budget that pleases everyone enough to keep things optimistic and relatively peaceful. That way Penachetti can leave on a high note after some years of conflict, and Tory and Crawford can begin in earnest to work on future budgets that will shape the city they want to build.
After all the rhetoric, watching how that process unfolds in this first, easy, election-year budget, will give us a true glimpse of the next four years at city hall.
Edward Keenan (ekeenan@thestar.ca ) writes on city issues. Follow: @thekeenanwire
