LARRY'S CORNER- Hamilton's Former Mayor Speaks

Should the Province Bail Out Hamilton? Again?

By Larry Di Ianni
(posted October 23, 2008)

Because of my federal political run my focus hasn't been on Hamilton local politics these past 40 days. Now that I am back to being a civilian, I can once again pay attention to the ever-interesting, local scene. I have an embarrassment of riches to write about: a new local Newspaper, The Bay Observer, Hamilton's continuing rocky leadership, why the Mayor was happy to be rid of one of his top staffers, the winners and losers in the ongoing process of selecting a new City Manager (the inside scoop), the burgeoning tax burden on our property owners, a perceived anti-business agenda at City Hall, the waning influence and senility of the CATCH group, Metrolinx and the truth about rapid transit in the city, and many more stories. I hope to fill the blog with some reasoned observations on many of these topics in the coming weeks.

But I want to dedicate today's column to the recurring theme (some would say nightmare) of a provincial bail-out to reduce the amount of taxes we have to pay towards our social service costs.

A brief refresher: when the city amalgamated, the Mike Harris Conservatives also downloaded social service, land ambulance and social housing costs onto the local municipalities. The total amount of extra costs incurred by the city of Hamilton in 2000 dollars was, as I recall, about $60M per year. We had some offsetting savings because of amalgamation of about $40M per year making our shortfall in the neighbourhood of $20M annually. Also, if one recalls, the City of Toronto had similar hardships, but they were assisted with their Social Service costs by a pooling arrangement with Halton, Peel, York and Durham that helped foot the Toronto bill. Hamilton on the other hand was all alone in paying its additional costs.

Recall as well that former Mayor Wade tried valiantly to have Premier Harris address this issue to no avail. Mike was not for bending the rules and helping Hamilton out. The Premier would not entertain the unfairness of the situation. Even when Stoney Creek MPP and future cabinet Minister Brad Clark tried to bring resources to the city in a very real and tangible way, the Conservative cabinet overruled his efforts and we got no assistance for social services.

It wasn't until the Conservatives were defeated by Mr. McGuinty and I became Mayor that we began to see some action. You will recall that in 2004, we handed the province a $20M bill for their social services short fall. Everyone thought I was crazy to do this. However, we enlisted the help of the community to make our case. I also spoke with the Premier, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, our local MPPs including Marie Bountrigianni, Ted McMeekin, an ailing Dominic Agostino and most importantly the Finance Minister, Mr. Greg Sorbara. The Province came through. Not only did we receive nearly everything we asked for, but the subsequent years of my tenure as Mayor and these last several years of Fred's tenure, the province has continued to come through. We also received a commitment from the government that they would begin to upload the costs which we had been burdened with. They have started with the land ambulance costs and some Public Health costs.

And has Hamilton been grateful for the province's generosity? I can't say that we have. Politically, our city has elected an additional NDP member in Hamilton East Stoney Creek; and has continued to elect an NDPer in Hamilton Center. Where's the gratitude one might ask? However, doing the right thing has nothing to do with being rewarded politically. That isn't, nor should it be the way democracy works. But it helps to make your point when you have government caucus members making it rather than opposition harangues.

At the local scene, when I was Mayor, Council was muted in its praise for the province. Privately, Councillors told me how happy they were. Publicly they always lamented that the money wasn't enough. Even the local daily never quite showed appropriate recognition of the Provincial efforts. They always questioned the yearly trek I would have to make, 'cap in hand' to be handed a sizable, multi-million dollar cheque. I remember telling the editorial board of the Spectator that I would have preferred a permanent fix, but had no objection to driving down the highway for an hour to receive a $20M cheque.

So, now as we are gripped with an economic downturn, again we are reliving the nightmare of higher taxes or termination of programs for needy people as the only options open to us. If the Province doesn't come through with the required $12M, our tax hike may be close to 9%, an untenably high number.

My first question would be to look at what Hamilton city hall has done to prepare for the lack of provincial contribution. After all I recall that the province announced a last-time, one-time contribution when it gave its money last year. Surely we should have prepared ourselves for this eventuality.

Councillor Sam Merulla, the one-time Liberal turned NDPer has already stated that the province is going after 'the most marginalized". His friend and political colleague Andrea Horwath who has an eye on Hamilton and a bigger one on the leadership of her party has flatly stated that "The province is turning its back on the city." And I caught Tim Hudak on television the other night decrying the province's decision to carry a $500M deficit, so presumably he would not favour helping out the marginalized in our community either.

But what are the facts? The facts are that the province has come through now for 5 years in a row. They have promised to look after social services and presumably will do so again. That is what the $500M dollars will contribute, in part, towards. The fact is that no one understands Hamilton's plight better than our capable government members: Sophia Aggelonitis and Cabinet Minister Ted McMeekin. In my discussions with these two individuals, they are totally focussed on helping the community. They do so quietly in caucus and at the cabinet table, I'm sure. I have no inside knowledge of what the government will do, nor do I let the current Hamilton administration off the hook if they have been sitting on their hands rather than proactively examining other sources of revenue or cost-cutting measures. However, I would place my trust in the abilities of Minister Ted or MPP Sophia before I would place any credence on the doomsday scenarios of Andrea or Sam.

Time will tell, but the first clue may be in Minister Deb Matthews release of her poverty report within the next few weeks. It will signal in a very clear way what the government intends to do with Social Services, not only for Hamilton, but for every municipality in Ontario. And when that report comes out, I think that Mr. Harris, now long gone, and Mr Hudak a talented leadership aspirant for his party, both the key architects of the downloading hardship for Hamilton, should hang their heads just a bit for the havoc their government wreaked on the ratepayers as well as the poor people of this city.

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