Tremblay can’t avoid a legacy of corruption
Between now and the next city election, everything the mayor does will be assessed from the perspective of brown envelopes and corruption. And everything he’s done in the past 11 years will be re-examined in that light
This should have been Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s legacy budget, his closing statement on three terms in office and his aspiration for Montreal for the coming years, whether he’s leading the city or not.
Instead, Tremblay’s last municipal budget before the November 2013 city election became the butt of puns and cynical statements about corruption as soon as he and his right-hand man, city executive committee chairman Michael Applebaum, presented it at a news conference on Tuesday.
The $4.9-billion 2013 municipal budget is up by 2.7 per cent over this year, and calls for a 3.3 per cent average municipal tax increase for residential and non-residential ratepayers in the city.
Would the city like its tax increases stuffed in brown envelopes, one social media pundit asked sarcastically on Twitter while the news conference was still going on in the city’s finance building next door to city hall.
“It’s like Montrealers are paying a mortgage on corruption and it’s scandalous,” opposition Vision Montreal councillor Véronique Fournier later told reporters in reaction to the tax hikes and longterm debt-financing costs contained in the spending plan.
“I think today Montrealers should find the 3.3 per cent increase in taxes indecent because in the past there were no control measures to prevent the situation we find ourselves in.”
If it wasn’t already obvious, it became clear with Tremblay’s budget presentation that at the end of three terms, the legacy of the longest-serving mayor of Montreal since Jean Drapeau will be this: corruption.
Not the conservative banking decisions that brought the city interest savings on more than $1 billion of debt in Tremblay’s first term. Not the long-awaited repair of neglected rotting infrastructure, albeit this carry-over promise from the first term remains far from complete. Not the new bus routes, extended métro hours and added bike paths. And not the vague promise of a tramway someday, maybe, we’ll see.
Tremblay’s legacy will be the very thing that city hall observers have long speculated prompted him to run for a third term in the first place. Since 2009, when corruption allegations began to surface late in his second mandate, Tremblay has sought to cleanse his administration’s image and reinvent himself as a crime fighter.
Yet as Tremblay was reading his budget speech at his news conference on Tuesday, one of his ruling Union Montreal’s former aides was describing in graphic detail to the Charbonneau Commission examining corruption in Quebec’s construction industry how Tremblay had instructed his party’s backroom organizers in his first mandate not to allow a trail of huge illegal campaign contributions to ever lead to him by telling them he “did not need to know about this.”
Tremblay categorically denied the allegations.
The testimony of the former organizer, Martin Dumont, has crushed Tremblay’s credibility, even his ability to table a balanced city budget devoid of frou-frou projects and with only a modest spending increase just above the rate of inflation.
Between now and the next city election, everything Tremblay does will be assessed from the perspective of brown envelopes and corruption. And everything he’s done in the past 11 years will be re-examined in that light.
In answering reporters’ questions about the budget, Tremblay tried to defend his record during his years at the helm of Montreal by citing his administration’s work to restore historic squares, increase municipal library hours and encourage private real estate investment.
“This budget represents the continuation of all of the efforts we’ve been making for close to 12 years with one objective,” he said. “Our biggest concern is improving the quality of life for our citizens.”
He spoke optimistically about the future, saying he’s negotiating on behalf of Quebec municipalities for a new fiscal deal with the provincial government. He also said he’s negotiating multiple-year labour contracts and agreements on pension fund reform with the city’s unions.
“I’m optimistic that the government will follow up on this recommendation,” he said of the fiscal pact with Quebec.
But his credibility to negotiate anything long term on behalf of the city has been thrown into doubt.
In Quebec, the provincial government that Tremblay is apparently negotiating a fiscal deal with seemed to back away from him. Municipal Affairs Minister Sylvain Gaudreault and Bernard Drainville, the minister for democratic institu- tions, said Tremblay should reflect on his future.
Tremblay announced last week, before Dumont’s testimony began, that he would remain in office until the end of his mandate.
Tremblay tried in vain to act like everything is status quo at city hall as he presented the budget.
The mayor said he’s comfortable raising taxes and spending, even though the Charbonneau Commission has now heard from former city engineers who testified that they rigged and inflated construction contracts for years in exchange for bribes.
“As a responsible manager of public finances of the city of Montreal with my team, I am at ease to ask citizens to make an extra effort (with tax increases),” Tremblay said.
“If we want to keep families in Montreal, we have to invest in our infrastructures, we have to invest in public transit, we have to invest in housing, we have to invest in parks that were abandoned, we have to invest in arenas, we have to invest in an enormous number of sectors that were abandoned during decades in Montreal.”
He even spoke in terms of the future. “We can tell you in advance what will be our budget for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017,” Tremblay said, referring to the four years of the next mandate.
“And as a function of our direction today, we will continue to manage public finances in a responsible way to respond to the real needs of citizens, meaning improving their quality of life.”
Tremblay said last week he would make an announcement shortly about whether he would run in the next election, hinting his decision would be made public after Friday’s speech at the Board of Trade.
But even the Board of Trade, which has trumpeted the administration’s previous municipal budgets, turned its back on him this time. The group described the 2013 spending plan in a press release as a disappointment to the business community because of the tax hikes, even though it has cheered previous budgets with bigger spending increases and tax hits.
Tremblay ceded only one thing to the opposition at city hall, which openly called his administration “corrupt.”
Vision Montreal has asked for a study of how much the city has lost to the corruption detailed by the city engineers and a former construction company boss who have testified before the Charbonneau Commission.
Tremblay says the studies are finished and will be made public.