Sexing up municipal governance...
This from Alistair Steele.
What's "interesting" and what's not is always in the eye of the beholder, but if you weren't among the few dozen people gathered for a panel discussion on municipal governance at Carleton University last Thursday evening, you'll have to rely on my judgement. It was called "Our Ottawa: Power and Decision Making at City Hall." The panelists were city clerk and solicitor Rick O'Connor, his deputy Leslie Donnelly, Carleton Public Policy and Administration prof Chris Stoney and Bob Brocklebank of the Federation of Citizen Associations and the Glebe Community Association. Dr. David Zussman from the Telfer School of Management was on the bill but canceled the morning of the event. Zussman also chaired the mayor's Taskforce on Governance.
The discussion coincides with something called the Mid-Term Governance Review at City Hall. It's a dense 61 pages of sober self-analysis, and council's voting on it this Wednesday. A lot of work has gone into this document, much of it by two of those panelists mentioned above, O'Connor and Donnelly. They helped draw up 10 white papers dealing with everything from how decisions are made, to who makes them. They also looked at the issue of public participation -- how your voices are not only heard, but listened too. Throw in recommendations from the mayor's task force, and you've got a new road map for "getting it done" at City Hall.
So what's new and different? One of the key recommendations in the review is to leave some of the small-time decision making -- think speed bumps and street names -- up to the Ward councillors. If Doug Thomson wants a new yield sign in Osgoode, the matter shouldn't have to rise to full council for perfunctory approval. This is what's known as "delegation of authority," and under the new governance structure, there will be a whole lot more delegating going on. The committee structure would also change, with the creation of a new and powerful Audit, Budget and Finance Standing Committee, which would do a lot of the legwork on the City Budget before it rises to council. Remember those five-day budget meetings? History. The new committee would be chaired by the mayor.
The goal, according to the review, is to give "greater authority to Standing Committees to be the final decision-maker on items within their mandate." That would seem to mean more power for committees and committee chairs, which may frighten some people...indeed, panelists and audience members at last week's event wondered aloud whether handing more authority over to smaller decision-making bodies is necessarily a good thing. But the authors of the review insist it's all about saving council from those pesky "transactional items" (again, think speed bumps and street names). And under the new structure, committee chairs, not managers, will face council to defend committee decisions.(As a side benefit, this could go at least part way to eradicating the "us vs. them" attitude that currently exists between councillors and staff, since councillors --not staff -- will have to answer for the recommendations that rise from committee).
In fact, the underlying motivation -- besides streamlining the decision-making process -- is to achieve greater accountability and transparency, according to the authors of the review. To that end, Citizen Advisory Committees --traditionally the gulag of city government -- will be given a greater voice. Advisory committee chairs will be handed the opportunity to address standing committees in an effort to ensure that matters discussed at the advisory level actually contribute to the discussion at committee. The review also calls for the city clerk to develop a new petition policy, so those long lists of signatures end up somewhere other than the shredder, And finally, the review calls for a renewed mandate for "Meetings Investigator," a little-known position filled by a man named Doug Wallace. It's his job to ensure that when council or committee retreats behind closed doors, it's for the right reasons. He's looked into a dozen complaints already this year, and he's delivered reports on three of them. Continuing that role makes sense. One hole in the review, however: there's still no recommendation for a Code of Conduct for councillors.
The Governance Review wasn't the only topic of discussion at last week's panel. (There was also a lot if talk about another topic: "Should municipal parties play a role" at City Hall?) But it was an attention-grabber, and for good reason. If council passes these recommendations later this week, it will be up to all of us to make sure these "major changes to the City's governance structure" are changes for the good.
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