Letter: Why People Don’t Run for Municipal Office
Former Owen Sound councillor John Tamming shares his thoughts on why some council candidate pools are looking thin.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The problem may be apathy but I don’t think that quite covers it. Scores of residents want to help their community flourish but many sense municipal office is not the path towards that end.
Let me offer up two reasons.
First, social and other media skew away from nuanced discussion and towards polarization. We go from zero to 11 in seconds in this day of amplified on-line outrage. And much of that outrage is flat out wrong.
The Owen Sound mayor and councillors were hammered recently for taking a hands-off approach to the prosecution of a resident for some trash infraction. But they are in fact legally barred from commenting on any prosecution. They may not trigger, encourage or discourage a specific charge. Ever. That is a fundamental rule of a free society – that our wallets and freedoms are not subject to the capricious whims of political interference.
Even for the mayor to express disappointment in the charge can be read by a bylaw prosecutor as a loss of faith in him or her (“will I lose my job?”) and can be construed as improper political interference.
The ONLY response permitted him is the response he offered – No comment. For doing precisely the proper thing, he is vilified by hundreds. The prospect of four years of this sort of thing will dissuade many of the more rational from running.
Second, the powers of councillors are really very limited. Subject to what some have called the administrative state, council has been thoroughly defenestrated. Consider:
Fire.
I ran two elections ago on a platform to, among other things, reduce fire costs (then 22% of our operating budget and still about the same). Council was unanimous in its vote to do just that.
Failed negotiations led to a 6 year arbitration process, including 3 years for the arbitrator just to write his decision. The city lost every single argument. An anonymous arbitrator, a person that you have never heard of and who will never be accountable to us as ratepayers, stymied the wishes of the electorate.
Now, them is the rules and one can argue that first responders deserve the protection of a binding arbitration process. But the fact is that the process renders council rather useless. And talented and motivated individuals do not, as a rule, like to waste time with useless endeavors.
Police.
This coming term it looks like police will be on the menu, both its operating and capital budgets as it seeks a new or substantially renovated headquarters.
You might think that council has the ability to go in and manage the police budget, to calibrate it along the lines of what the ratepayers believe are best, to vote, say, for new windows and holding cells but not for a new build. That would be naïve. The city can only vote the entire budget up or down.
If the police board objects to what the city has done, it can appeal over its head to —you guessed it — a provincial body which will issue a binding decision on the matter.
Again, this dissuades your average professional and entrepreneur from running. You miss out on the candidates who are hard wired to get things done. You get elected and find out that you may think you are pulling levers but they are not attached to anything in particular.
Integrity Commissioner.
Our Codes of Conduct have become weaponized. A councillor cannot hammer away on any particular issue without the risk of a staff member or fellow councillor taking offense, construing it as a personal attack and triggering a complaint to someone called (think Orwell) the “integrity commissioner”.
It used to be that we had elections to punish bad conduct but now we outsource that to an unelected freelancer — all on the questionable assumption that he or she knows more about ethics than does the voter.
Even if no complaint is actually made to the commissioner, that very option dampens and erodes the liveliness and qualify of debates and makes it more difficult for councillors to hold staff to account. If you watch Rogers on a Monday night, marvel at the tedium of it all and the lack of feisty debate, this just may be the reason.
It is an honour to serve in council. You can accomplish meaningful things. Just not as much as a person might suppose. Just as school boards have been denuded of much of their relevance, Queen’s Park has, over the years, starved its municipal creatures of much of their relevance. To see near empty slates of candidates, to hear of possible acclamations, should not surprise.
Cordially,
John A. Tamming
Letters to the Editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of The Owen Sound Current and its editor or publisher.