Politics 101

ORIGINALLY POSTED Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Around the horseshoe sits the council. To the right of the Mayor sits the Chief Administrative Officer and to the left the Director of Corporate Affairs. The Directors of various town departments sit across the end of the horseshoe along with a corporate secretary.

Minus the council, the value of the top administration has an annual price tag of close to a million dollars. That is the cost of the professional expertise to operate a municipal corporation the size of Aurora.

What you see on Cable TV is not all you get.

In Ontario, municipalities are little more than agencies for the provincial government. A multiplicity of provincial acts and regulations govern just about every step we take. As well as planning and directing the efficient operation of their departments, staff have the responsibility of guiding council through the maze of government rules and regulations. It should not be an onerous task but it often is.

Protocol at a public meeting prohibits staff from speaking unless invited to do so. They cannot answer questions they have not been asked. If a councillor appears to have misunderstood the legal intricacies of a particular matter, the relevant staff person must by a wink and a nod, signal the C.A.O. then the C.A.O. will - figuratively speaking - tug on the chairperson's sleeve, to signify that intervention is required.

This silly, surreptitious pantomime is necessary because staff can never be seen to be entering the debate and influencing policy decisions. It comes about because all of our meetings are public and therefore formal. There are no opportunities for informal dialogue between staff and the elected representatives. Any time they are together, protocol must be observed.

All political parties at the senior levels of government have the opportunity to caucus. Only municipal politicians are considered to be so venal, they cannot be trusted to discuss anything out of sight and hearing of the public. The irony lies in the minimal members of the public who want to overhear every word uttered.

In the last council, it was not unusual for the four headless horsemen, when they had the majority, to decide they need not abide by silly provincial laws or be guided by staff.

During most of my years in public office, successive councils have recognized the abiding principle - the law is the law - ignore it at your peril.

It's a horse’s ass that thinks he is above the law, election notwithstanding.