Hidden in Plain View: Local Agencies, Boards, and Commissions in Canada

IMFG No. 4 / 2013 perspectives Hidden in Plain View: Local Agencies, Boards, and Commissions in Canada Jack Lucas Department of Political Science, University of Toronto About IMFG The Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) is an academic research hub and non-partisan think tank based in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. IMFG focuses on the fiscal health and governance challenges facing large cities and city-regions. Its objective is to spark and inform public debate, and to engage the academic and policy communities around important issues of municipal finance and governance. The Institute conducts original research on issues facing cities in Canada and around the world; promotes high-level discussion among Canada’s government, academic, corporate and community leaders through conferences and roundtables; and supports graduate and post-graduate students to build Canada’s cadre of municipal finance and governance experts. It is the only institute in Canada that focuses solely on municipal finance issues in large cities and city-regions. IMFG is funded by the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, Avana Capital, and TD Bank Group. Author and Acknowledgements Jack Lucas is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and a 2012-2013 Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Municipal Finance and Governance. In his doctoral research, Jack is exploring the history of local special purpose bodies in Canada with a focus on processes of institutional change. The author wishes to thank André Côté and Enid Slack for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and not IMFG or its funders. Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto 1 Devonshire Place Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3K7 http://www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/imfg/ Series editor: André Côté © Copyright held by author, 2013 ISBN 978- 0-7727-0918-1 Executive Summary Many of the most explosive local controversies today—spending scandals, service disruptions, political disputes—share one thing: they involve local agencies, boards, and commissions (or ABCs). In Toronto, controversies about waterfront redevelopment, libraries, public housing, and transit planning have been complicated—even caused—by the ABCs in these fields. The same is true in many other Canadian cities. This should not come as a surprise. Everywhere we turn in municipal politics, from transit to housing, conservation to libraries, education to policing, we encounter ABCs: local or regional public agencies, with a single or limited set of functions, that receive their revenue partly or wholly from municipal governments, provincial governments, user charges, or some combination of these. These ABCs (or “special-purpose bodies”) provide hugely important services, spend large sums of money, and raise serious questions about democratic accountability. Yet we spend little time thinking about how they are governed. Supporters of local ABCs argue that some services should be kept at arm’s length from municipal politics and that ABCs allow certain operations to be governed by those with an interest or expertise in the field, rather than by municipal politicians. Those who oppose ABCs argue that they keep local councils from coherent budgeting, priority-setting, and policymaking and that ABCs are nearly invisible to the public, making important decisions without sufficient local oversight and accountability. This paper poses three practical and important questions. The first concerns existence: do we need to have ABCs at all? The second is about scale: what is the appropriate geographic boundary (local, regional, provincial, etc.) for a particular policy task? The third is aboutpersonnel: who should sit on the board of the ABC and should they be appointed or elected? We consider each of these questions in light of experiences with local ABCs in Canada and abroad. IMFG Perspectives In August of 2011, however, this small corner of the city was anything but forgotten. That month, local media Hidden in reported that members of the city’s executive committee had plans to transform the city’s waterfront redevelopment Plain View: program. Naturally, the headlines focused on the striking new suggestions for the waterfront: a monorail link to the Local Agencies, Boards, downtown, a massive shopping mall and waterfront hotel, and the world’s largest Ferris wheel. But the real debate and Commissions in that summer—and the question that Toronto’s council was required in September 2011 to answer—was whether Canada responsibility for redevelopment in the Port Lands should be transferred from Waterfront Toronto, a tri-level redevelopment body, to Toronto Port Lands Co., a city agency. Introduction Waterfront Toronto, with four appointees each from At the bottom of Cherry Street, on an ordinary summer the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, was morning, the city of Toronto seems a world away. Early criticized by some as being too distant from the city and too risers walk dogs through the cool lakefront air. Gravel trucks cautious for speedy action. A reorganized Port Lands Co., on rumble past. Tourists loiter at the water’s edge, their cameras the other hand, would have two municipal councillors on its pointed at the skyline across the harbour. Standing in the board, along with two municipal bureaucrats and five council sand at Cherry Beach, looking across at the morning roar appointees, and would therefore be linked much more of the city’s downtown expressway, visitors could be forgiven directly to Toronto’s city council. For all the talk of shopping for thinking that they had stumbled into a completely malls and Ferris wheels, the waterfront debate in summer forgotten world. 2011 was really a debate about special-purpose governance.1 – 1 – Hidden in Plain View: Local Agencies, Boards, and Commissions in Canada This was not unusual. Everywhere we turn in municipal When we refer to local ABCs, then, we are speaking politics, from waterfront redevelopment to libraries, transit about public agencies of limited purposes, operating locally to housing, education to policing, we encounter a peculiar or regionally, that are more or less formally separated from administrative animal: the special-purpose body. These ABCs the ordinary council-committee structure. The best-known of local government—agencies, boards, and commissions— special-purpose bodies have been around for decades, even are more than mere administrative quirks, confined to a few centuries: school boards, library boards, transit commissions, 2 forgotten corners of the local landscape. They provide hugely and boards of health. In many municipalities, however, important services, spend large sums of money, and raise special-purpose bodies have proliferated. In Toronto, for serious questions about democratic accountability. But what example, they range from the massive Police Services Board are they? How do they operate? And why might we defend or to much smaller operations like the William H. Bolton Arena deplore them? Board of Management. In this paper, we The fiscal will provide a toolkit for arrangements for local thinking about local ABCs ABCs provide very important services, special-purpose bodies for anyone who wants to also vary widely. In understand the strengths, spend large sums of money, and raise most cases, municipal weaknesses, and purposes of serious questions about democratic local special-purpose bodies councils have the final in Canada. If our goal is to accountability. authority to approve understand and improve the budgets of special- municipal governance in purpose bodies. But this Canada, we cannot afford authority is a matter of to ignore these local special-purpose bodies. degree. In some cases, such as libraries, council can review and adjust the board’s submitted budget.5 In other cases, What are local special-purpose bodies? like policing, council can approve or reject a budget, but it cannot specify particular items that the board should increase The first challenge in any discussion of local special- or decrease.6 And in the peculiar case of school boards in purpose bodies is that the enormous range and variety Ontario, council is required by law to levy taxes on behalf of ABCs, each with its own peculiar history, makes them of the board, but has no control over the board’s budget.7 difficult to summarize. When a group of Canada’s leading In many cases, local boards also receive funding from the experts on local ABCs met some years ago to write a book on the subject, they found that the task of defining the special- province, and particular tasks and services are often mandated purpose body was more difficult than they had expected.3 and funded, wholly or in part, by the province. Whatever the fiscal arrangements, however, the money involved is no Still, it is useful to have some definition of the ABC small matter: in many Canadian cities, more than a third of in mind. In my view, the best definition can be found in the city’s operating budget is handed over to special-purpose a decades-old report by Susan Dolbey of the Government bodies every year.8 of Ontario, who defined local special-purpose bodies as follows: Consider Vancouver. In 2012, of the city’s $1.1-billion operating budget, $243 million—more than a fifth of the (1) They are public bodies in that they are either budget—was devoted to policing; a further $103 million elected by local voters

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