Who is advising Mayor Miller?
He badly needs a chief of staff, say ex-mayoral advisers Properly supported, Miller could be ‘a star in the firmament’ ANALYSIS
Cities are defined by their leaders. And when cities are in crisis, they look to their mayors for reassurance.
David Miller failed to understand that when he went on vacation last summer instead of comforting a city exploding in gun violence. But recently Miller found his voice — and perhaps his purpose — when he spoke to parishioners whose church had become the latest gun murder crime scene.
“ We have to reach out in every neighbourhood,” Miller told the congregation. “ And we have to do that together.”
It was Miller at his best. And those who have advised former Toronto mayors say Miller needs to bring this kind of compassion and resolve to every community cowering from gun crime. But with Queen’s Park poised to give Toronto unprecedented new powers, can Miller play this hugely important symbolic and inspirational role at a neighbourhood level and still run the country’s largest city? Not if he doesn’t beef up his city hall office with a chief of staff to bring rigor and focus to the mayoralty, they say.
“ I think David Miller could be a star in the firmament if he were properly supported,” said Bill Wilkerson, who rescued former mayor Art Eggleton after an unfocused first term. With Wilkerson running his office, Eggleton went on to become the longest serving mayor of pre- amalgamation Toronto from 1981 to 1991.
“ Miller is a guy who has no one to delegate to,” Wilkerson said. “ It’s too bad because he’s smart. He’s articulate. And he looks the part.”
Miller is the first Toronto mayor in memory to run an office without a chief of staff. And, city hall watchers say, it shows.
Miller chairs city council meetings that rarely finish on time. Residents see little progress on Miller’s vision for a “ clean and beautiful city,” a rejuvenated port, expanded public transit and a corruption-free civic service. And several serious missteps on the city’s crime, waterfront and administration files beg the question: Who is advising Miller? The mayor says he gets lots of advice from many quarters. He turns to senior civic staff to guide him on policy questions; the community speaks through his various round tables; and his office provides political advice.
Miller says he doesn’t want — or need — a kitchen cabinet of close advisers. And he rejects the suggestion that he should have a single “ gatekeeper” in his office to run the show.
“ I do things differently,” Miller said defensively in his city hall office. “ I am completely happy with my staff and how they operate.” But are they helping Miller live up to his potential? The Star interviewed chiefs of
staff who have served under a generation of previous Toronto mayors, as well as councillors and community activists. All spoke about the impossible pull on a mayor’s time and the symbolic role of the office.
“ When political offices fail, it’s usually because there is an inability to tell truth to power,” said Rod Phillips, chief of staff for Mel Lastman during the chaotic early years of the megacity.
“ Telling truth to power” takes a strong individual who has the complete confidence of the mayor and who is empowered to play that role, he said. Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman, who was Barbara Hall’s director of operations from 1994 to 1997, said clear lines of accountability are essential. Without commenting on Miller’s office, he said: “ I am very, very suspicious of what I call diffused accountability. As long as there is clarity around the issue of accountability, you can make any model work. But if the model is lending itself to a sense of diffused accountability, that’s a problem.”
Unlike premiers and prime ministers who are relatively distant from the electorate, citizens expect to be able to speak to the mayor, said Jeff Evenson, who served both Eggleton and June Rowlands. And it’s the chief of staff’s job to make it happen, or speak with authority on the mayor’s behalf.
“ It was good for the mayor to have somebody who you could phone and who was designated as the mayor’s ‘ go- to’ guy,” said Evenson.
Miller supporters are reluctant to speak publicly about their unease. But confidentially they say they don’t know who to call in Miller’s office to make things happen.
“ Miller bristles at the notion that he needs to please community leaders. But it leads to a lack of confidence on the outside about how well the city is being managed,” said one observer.
Wilkerson, known for his savvy and ability to knock heads during Eggleton’s mayoralty, says Miller’s collaborative office strategy is “ just plain stupid.”
“ The mayor doesn’t have time to run his office,” he said. Of course the mayor has to be in charge. But when the mayor is out, someone has to be taking care of business in the office.
“ Mayors who operate like freelancers under-invest in their own potential,” said Wilkerson. “ Mayors who populate their office with good, loyal but unqualified people pay a high price for that,” he said.
Scarborough Councillor Brian Ashton, the first suburban politician to come out publicly in favour of Miller during the mayoral campaign, feels the mayor has not lived up to his enormous promise. And he blames Miller’s office for failing to sharpen the focus of his message and communicate it to the public.
“ A chief of staff would help set an agenda and keep him on message,” said Ashton (Ward 36 Scarborough Southwest.)“ Miller needs someone to connect his political agenda to his public agenda, so there’s a constant refrain going on in the communione ty. I don’t see that consistency.”
Councillor Kyle Rae, a Miller supporter on council, says previous mayors have brought in people with a wide variety of experience outside city hall to lead their offices. Miller’s co- executive assistants are both former constituency staff from his days as a councillor. Rae ( Ward 27, Toronto CentreRosedale) says he has no problem with Miller’s staff. He just feels the group is missing “ an external dynamic” to lead it.
“ Mel ( Lastman) had the knack of surrounding himself with people many leagues deeper and wiser than he, which is a very smart thing to do,” he said. The mayor needs someone to deliver bad news both up the chain — to him — and down the chain to office staff, councillors and the bureaucracy, Phillips said. The staff also needs some- in the office to go to when the mayor is busy being mayor. The chief of staff is the senior voice in the office with an intimate knowledge of what is going on in the mayor’s mind, Phillips said. He or she can help the media firm up facts or speak for the office off the record when it would be inadvisable for the mayor to speak himself. For example, the public believes the city caved in to union demands during the recently concluded police labour dispute. Miller insists otherwise. But both he and his office, citing confidentiality, failed to explain this to the media the day the story broke.
“ If you don’t have a chief of staff to play that role, you are missing a key tool in the kit,” Phillips said.
“ Once a mayor makes a mistake, it’s hard to recover. The job is to help the mayor avoid those mistakes in the first place.”
Miller’s decision not to visit the family of a 4- year- old boy caught in the crossfire of a gunfight last August was probably his biggest mistake to date, Wilkerson said.
Miller rightly didn’t want to be seen to be exploiting the family’s tragedy by staging a “ photoop” visit. But a politically shrewd chief of staff would have been able to talk him into making that crucial visit as a public sign of support and reassurance, Wilkerson said. There have been other missteps that have damaged the mayor’s image. His 11th-hour intervention in the waterfront design process to support an opposing vision being promoted by a campaign supporter was unnecessary and cost him politically. And his initial failure to find fault with councillors who may have written reference letters for family members seeking city work showed a shocking lack of judgment.
Less publicized errors include the mayor’s absence at the September opening of the MaRs medical research centre. The premier, federal MPs and even Markham Mayor Don Cousens were at the event, but Miller’s office wasn’t able to muster a single representative to attend.
Every public mistake represents many others being made behind the scenes, said Wilkerson. “ It’s worrisome.”
Miller needs the kind of senior person who will remind him that a 70- per- cent approval rating in a recent poll is like winning a hockey game 7- 3 without another team on the ice, Wilkerson said.
“ Who scored the three goals against you?” he said. “ You did.”