Time to reform city governance - status quo isn’t good enough
Today City Councillors will see the first versions of the White Papers developed by City staff that will form the basis of the debate for our Mid-Term Governance Review in March and April.
The information in the White Papers is a direct result of City staff interviewing all of the Councillors and collecting their ideas on how to make our decision-making process more accountable, predictable and effective.
It is good to see my colleagues getting interested in making the kinds of changes required to improve City Hall.
What is this debate about and how will it affect you?
City Council will have to answer some of the following questions as part of the upcoming Governance Review:
Do we need every decision from committee to rise to Council? Do we need to oversee finances year-round, empower City Councillors to develop a budget and create a new Finance and Audit Committee? How do we make committees more accountable in their field of responsibilities? How do we make Councillors more accountable on matters that impact their wards? Do we need more independent boards such as a Transit Commission and a Health Board?
What do you think?
A good start
The Clerk’s Office has done a great job in their White Papers summarizing ideas from City Councillors that range from procedural improvements to the restructuring of committees to creating a new Finance and Audit Committee that would oversee City finances and budgeting.
Tomorrow the Mayor’s Taskforce on Governance, under the chairmanship of David Zussman, Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, will release its report containing recommendations on how to bring more strategic thinking, accountability and operational effectiveness to City Hall.
In June 2008 I appointed this independent Taskforce (click here to see press release)with members from the academic and business community to review the current governance model at City Hall and identify ways to help Council become more accountable, strategic and focused on the long-term.
After two years on the job, I constantly hear from the public that they want to see more accountability at City Hall and I strongly believe that the status quo is simply not good enough anymore.
One of my main motivators in creating the Taskforce on Governance was my belief that the current budget process at the City of Ottawa is flawed. I believe we need to keep an eye on spending year-round with a new Finance and Audit Committee.
This will be one of the most important debates we have during this term of Council and with the Zussman Report and the City’s White Papers, Council has all the tools it needs to significantly improve the way we do business at City Hall now and after the next election.
We are starting the conversation and it is important that we consult with the residents of Ottawa on a go-forward basis to ensure we make changes that benefit the public.
I want to thank the members of the Taskforce for their dedication and hard work to identify ways to make the City of Ottawa more accountable.
What is the process?
The City’s Governance Review takes place in two stages. The first is a mid-term review between March and April 2009 and the second is a full review that will occur in conjunction with the next election in 2010.
Please let me know your thoughts on governance by commenting on my blog and make sure check back tomorrow to connect to an online discussion tool and see the Taskforce report in full.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I appreciate your efforts.
Something that I think would be helpful in promoting good and consistent municipal governance in Ottawa and elsewhere in Ontario is a formal or informal system of party affiliation for candidates.
At present the average voter can only cast a ballot based on name recognition (i.e. a long-standing incumbent) brief election pamphlet blurbs, or what a pundit in a local newspaper might say.
The hard truth is that fresh candidates for neighbourhood councillors often don’t have much in the way of media or public profiles. If one doesn’t want to vote for a longstanding incumbent one often has little more than an inkling of what a specific candidate might be like in office. Additionally, when everyone is nominally running as an ‘independent’ there is no vetting process for candidate suitability whatsoever, other than tittle-tattle in the local media, which can be heavily biased.
When you really don’t know what you’re voting for many sensible people will decline to vote at all rather than risk an uninformed pig-in-a-poke choice.
In addition, when I cast a ballot for a Mayoral candidate I would like to have an opportunity to select a local councillor with whom my choice for Mayor could work productively, and vice versa. At present this is next to impossible for the average voter to do with any confidence. I think some sort of party affiliation system like they have in many other jurisdictions in Canada and elsewhere would help in this regard.
Good luck with your initiative.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:49 am
I’d like to see OC Transpo operate separately from the City of Ottawa, and have all decisions made through a Transit Commission, that is arm’s length reach to City Council.