McGuinty Dragging His Feet On Uploading Costs From Municipalities

Running a government at any level takes a great deal of planning, advance work and most of all, time. The most important planning piece that any municipal government must put together is the budget. Back in 2006 when I ran for City Council in Peterborough, I went through the entire budget process. I had the books, the numbers and when I took it all in, I gained a whole new appreciation for that entire process. It's a year-long bit of work and is something that requires a great amount of attention.

So tonight when I read a report from the Canadian Press about problems and open questions for the municipal budget process in municipalities, big and small, across Ontario I just had to respond. Here is some of what the article had to say:

"A long-awaited report detailing the Ontario government's plan to upload an array of services from Ontario municipalities is months overdue, even as cities and towns struggle against the tide of a slumping provincial economy, opposition critics said Thursday.

The delay - the report was originally due months ago - has forced municipalities to start planning budgets without knowing how responsibility for various services will be split between the two levels of government, said NDP municipal affairs critic Andrea Horwath.

"It's unacceptable that municipalities are trying to budget in the dark, with a blindfold," Horwath said. "They need to get at this issue and they need to get at it in a big strong way."

Announced nearly two years ago, the joint review was to take place over 18 months and examine areas such as delivery of housing, health and social services, and infrastructure funding."

Now, for those of you who aren't aware of the complete history behind this should take a look back to August of last year, just as the Ontario Provincial Election campaign was about to get into full swing.  At that time Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty made a campaign promise: a four-year plan to upload social service costs being paid by Ontario municipalities, part of the downloading done by Mike Harris. To add to that promise, Dalton McGuinty promised, if re-elected, to start uploading those costs as of January 1st, 2008. So here we are, August 3rd, 2008, eight months past that "promised" date, and the Liberals haven't even released the report, let alone said what they will and will not upload. Dalton McGuinty break a promise??? He'd never do that, right??? Oh yeah, that's right, he has a long record for breaking promises. I guess we can just add this one to the very long list.

But in the meantime, all the municipalities are into the budget process (some municipalities finalize their budgets in December, others in March/April) and have no clue what they are going to have to pay for. Let's face it, those social services costs make up a huge part of their budgets and not knowing what they owe there makes all the difference in the world to them. How can you start talking about infrastructure work or possible tax increases if that large piece of your budget is totally up in the air. This must make for very stressful times for Ontario's municipalities, which helps to explain some of the reactions from some of Ontario's municipal leaders:

"Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley lambasted the government for stalling on taking back costs he said should never have been dumped on municipalities in the first place,

"This is the only province in Canada that puts social services on property taxes," Bradley said.

Solving that problem "could have been done on the back of a napkin at a Tim Hortons on a Saturday afternoon coffee session."

Downloading onto municipalities has crippled communities for nearly a decade and now that Ontario is in an economic downturn, it will only get worse, Bradley warned. Bradley said he's also concerned about the province's ability to resume responsibility for those costs in the current economic climate....

Joe Rinaldo, Hamilton's acting city manager, said it would have been nice to have the issue dealt with before the budgeting process began but the city still welcomes the review of services.

"It's taking a little longer than anticipated," Rinaldo said. "From the city's perspective, we would have preferred the issue had been dealt with prior to the 2008 budget.""

I find Mayor Bradley's comment about the province might not being able to take on the costs because of bad times interesting. Has Dalton left enough money in the provincial kitty to keep this promise, or is he going to use that as his out and his excuse to welch on this promise? I guess we'll see, but in the meantime here we have another promise from Dalton McGuinty that we are still waiting to be kept. Sadly, this is business as usual in Ontario and it's the municipalities of Ontario that get to suffer for the McGuinty Liberals trouble with keeping their promises.

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