Layton’s surprise victory suggests a shift in politics
These days, there aren’t a lot of surprises in the city’s budget meetings. For all the sound and fury, when the meeting ends things turn out pretty much as they seemed they would. Time was, back when Rob Ford was mayor, all kinds of unpredictable things would happen. Members of the mayor’s dependable voting block would make a pro-wrestling style face-turn partway through the meeting and totally rewrite the budget under his nose. Notorious heel Giorgio Mammoliti would walk on a motion that would lead to Ford voting against his own budget. We’d be up all night hearing stories. Sometimes it was bananas. Sometimes it was actually interesting.
Under Mayor John Tory, it doesn’t go like that. Progressive councillors like Gord Perks and Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam make motions you expect them to make suggesting slightly higher tax rates and targeted programs to get more funding. Lessprogressive councillors like James Pasternak and Mike Colle make the speeches you expect about how their residents will be forced out of their homes if property taxes are raised at all. Tory and his budget chief Gary Crawford use the word “balance” a lot, even when the budget itself isn’t quite exactly balanced yet. Then they all vote and things go exactly as they were expected to at the start of the meeting.
One of the most dependable, predictable parts of the process has been Councillor Mike Layton moving a motion to make industrial wastewater polluters pay the full cost of treating the water they dump off on the city. This first came onto the agenda in 2012 when staff — and the auditor general — suggested it was fair and should be done. It wasn’t a lot of money at stake — the city’s de facto subsidy of these polluters has amounted to maybe a little over $1 million per year — but in principle it makes sense that the companies dirtying the water should pay the cost of cleaning it.
But council has never approved it.
Every year since, Layton has brought it back — at the budget committee meetings, at executive committee meetings, at city council’s budget meetings. And every year it would die.
You’d look up and there was Layton, rolling that boulder up the hill again. The only sure thing is it would roll right on back down.
Last year, it was close. His motion died on a tied vote.
On Thursday, Layton stood to move his motion again. “It’s pretty much exactly the same thing we’ve voted on every year for the last seven years,” he said by way of introduction, noting a slight legal tweak to the language. He suggested that if for no other reason, his colleagues should support him because then “you won’t have to hear me talk about it ever again.”
Then, to the astonishment of some longtime budget spectators, the motion passed. Overwhelmingly so: The vote was 23-3, and drew support form the mayor and the budget chief, both of whom voted against it last year.
There was laughter and applause in the chamber when the vote was announced. Speaker Frances Nunziata asked if Layton wanted the vote count framed. His friend Councillor Joe Cressy reminded everyone that at one point a year earlier Layton had promised to resign if it passed. Though no one suggested he keep that promise.
“It’s nice to win something,” Layton said on Friday, reflecting on the vote. “We lost big time in this budget,” he said of the bigger picture, reflecting on his shot-down suggestion to reintroduce the vehicle registration tax, and his council allies’ parade of defeated tax and service increase motions. Amid all that losing, a small long-awaited victory.
He said he hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to whip or count votes on this — this year or in past years. He brought it back every year because it made sense. That’s what he ultimately chalked the victory up to. “I actually think it was just so right,” he said. In the past, he said, he thought even those voting against it thought it was the right thing, but relationships with certain lobbyists from certain companies muddied things up. “It was politics.” This year, for once, the politics moved in his favour.
“I think myself and a number of other councillors concluded the time had come,” Tory told the Star, noting that he expects people will see his commitment to environmental and anti-pollution issues displayed in other ways in the near future.
I asked Layton if he’d need a new hobby, now that this longstanding horse had finally ridden. “This hasn’t really been taking up much of my time,” he said, though he went on to note that the related issue of how people pay for stormwater fees may be coming up soon.
Some of these companies that will face higher charges under this motion can rightly complain, he noted, that because stormwater fees come from water bills, many of the biggest contributors to our stormwater system — especially large parking lots — pay very little. The same polluter-pays principle could be coming on that front soon, he said. That would be coming to next year’s budget.
And it sounded like he hasn’t given up on the vehicle registration tax yet, though as he acknowledged, conventional wisdom says that is doomed from the start.
It would be a big surprise if he succeeded in bringing it back. Our budget process doesn’t do surprises very often these days. But Layton showed this week, even now, even on issues we seem to have already debated plenty, maybe surprises aren’t completely impossible.