At 11am today, Adam Giambrone held a press conference at which he profusely apologised to his supporters, to his personal partner, and to his fellow councillors for the recent revelations about his personal life and his mishandling of the response. Then he left the podium.
A few minutes later, his Executive Assistant, Kevin Beaulieu, returned to read the full statement in which Giambrone announced that he was withdrawing from the mayoralty race, but would remain as councillor for Ward 18 and Chair of the TTC. He says he wants to address the renaissance of the TTC and the building of Transit City.
Whether he actually gets to do this remains to be seen. The Commission will meet next week, and it is possible that a vote of non-confidence will end Giambrone’s role as Chair. His opponents may use this opportunity to tar much of what he and others in Mayor Miller’s camp have achieved with transit, and that would be a terrible mistake. Those changes, those policies exist not just because of Giambrone, but because many councillors, the mayor, Queen’s Park and countless members of the public recognize that transit in Toronto must improve. The chair may pass to another councillor, but the organization and the goals remain.
The TTC is in desperate need of clear, unambiguous leadership from someone who inspires confidence and trust, from someone whose word can be believed, whose announcements are not second-guessed as photo ops for a political campaign.
I have been a long-time supporter and advisor to Adam Giambrone, but my view is that he must step down.
cross-posted from Steve’s personal blog
17 comments
Could you detail what he and others in Mayor Miller’s camp have achieved with PT?
I couldn’t agree with you more Steve.
I think stepping down from the TTC chair might be overkill. Once the media frenzy blows over there is no reason why Giambrone’s personal indiscretions should interfere with his work on the commission. I don’t think this post makes a strong case otherwise.
I also fear that the transition to a new chair would lead to a lot of backtracking and pausing just when we’re at the point where the TTC desperately needs to move forward.
Glen, are you $%$%!ing kidding me. Being disingenuous is not a charming personality trait.
Re the human sacrifice of Adam Giambrone – as much as everyone in the the media says it was ‘inevitable’ or ‘for the greater good’ – so what? Our city is not a better place for what happened today. I would have preferred to hear what his live in partner had to say, before signing his death certificate. If she could have forgiven him, then I could look the other way.
Soon everyone will have said or done something, recorded on Facebook or online or via text message, transmissible for all to see, that ‘should get them fired.’ But at a certain point, the way insidious gotcha technology pervades our daily lives, we will have to stop asking people to resign for any and all stupidities, simply because YOU CAN’T FIRE EVERYONE. YOU HAVE TO LIVE WITH THEM. An attitude of instant payback only promotes a culture of paralysis and fear where real change is impossible. It is too impractical to follow the politically correct ethos to its logical conclusion: ie that we are all guilty and must be cast into the wilderness.
Maybe one day, when our political and media climate grows some moral sophistication beyond that of a tattling nine-year-old, the words ‘love your enemy’ will mean something, it will be ‘live and let live’, and the knee-jerk retaliations/penalties for impropriety will take place on Facebook, not meatspace. In general we are still massive hypocrites about this sort of thing. I can’t wait for the day we are allowed to be our true stupid embarrassing selves. Although I wasn’t voting for him anyway, I say support Adam Giambrone.
The personal indiscretions, the question of how many more women will appear as former lovers, has nothing to do with running the TTC. What does, however, is the need for honesty, transparency and trust. People need to know that what the TTC Chair says isn’t half the story, or one quarter of the story, and that they get the truth from the outset. They need to know that decisions about policies will best serve the city, not an election campaign. Leadership is impossible without trust.
Miller transit: Overall a move from thinking of transit as a service we provide mainly for commuters and at the lowest acceptable standard of attractiveness, to a system that actively tries to encourage new riders and expand to support city building goals. Specifics: Ridership Growth Strategy (better service standards), renovation of the surface fleet, Transit City.
Failures? Not pushing hard enough during the first Miller term, and leaving too much to be finished in a third term or by a successor.
The problem is that there are too many politicians on the Toronto Transit Commission. There was a time when people who know about transit was on the commission, even in the beginning.
For example, a former general manager of the Toronto Street Railway ended up as a commissioner, even Chairman from 1930-1939. Maybe if we could get the politicians off the commission, we could get former general manager, David Gunn, as a commissioner (if he wants to get out of retirement).
He should step aside until the fare hike leak is investigated. If proven, his fellow Commissioners should dismiss him as Chair under the bylaws. If not – I think by then he will have been deemed to have paid a sufficient political price for being #ttcshagger. What price Ms. McQuarrie makes him pay is her business.
re: Steve on failures … failures should also include perpetuating a situation where the Commission and the political level continue to do little more than act as apologists for TTC management rather than challenge them and hold them to account on behalf of the public. More than funding, I think the TTC’s issues stem from the fact that it is a dysfunctional bloated organization that has gotten away with being unresponsive for so long because the politicians (Chairs primarily) tend to apologize for any screw up. The recent Star article in which Councillor Giambrone tried to minimize his role as Chair (just before his Mayoral bid) showed that either he has little understanding of what the role of the Chair is OR that he thinks the public doesn’t understand what the role of the Chair is. (Myself, I tend to tink it’s a case of the latter.) But either way, you have someone who is unfit to lead the TTC through its current challenges.
IMHO there is a strange paradoxical demand. On the one hand, it seems people want an ‘expert,’ someone who knows transit issues to be chair of the TTC. On the other hand, we also want this person to be ‘accountable,’ usually in the form of ‘elected.’
I can’t help but think of the cliche “have their cake and eat it too” … e.g. the wish to have a super transit system without paying for it.
Less abstractly, I’d like to see Giambrone replaced with someone somewhat impartial, if only to mark the limits of the Chair. I have a sense that directing out frustrations with the TTC toward the Chair is a misdirection.
I see the failures whenever I see a subway car or bus with a sticky floor and garbage thrown all over. I see the failures when graffiti that is clearly visible to the public is simply not removed anymore on the tunnel walls just beyond the station. I hear the failures whenever I have to cover my ears because of the screech of the brakes.
And the current group don’t seem to understand these basic “tie your shoes” aspects of providing this kind of service. It has to kept pleasant, not an assault on the senses.
So to respond to this:
“Miller transit: Overall a move from thinking of transit as a service we provide mainly for commuters and at the lowest acceptable standard of attractiveness”
No, it’s increasingly looking like a nastier system with every passing year. I wonder what the next common maintenance failure we’ll see. Not replacing light bulbs on station platforms for weeks after the fact?
Steve,
On the immediate question of who should be Chair of the TTC, my view is that Councillor Joe Mihevc is already vice-Chair of the TTC. In the past he has expressed he need not be full Chair, however he is fully capable and were he to step in on at least an interin basis and step up, it would go a long way to answering concerns in your second to last paragraph above.
HiMY SYeD
Steve, in all honesty I think that the TTC has, at best, only had a modicum of success. Besides the points mentioned by other posters, there are items like the hybrid buses, dirty washrooms and even the effectiveness of the TTCs efforts to increase ridership. Productivity looks to be on a downward trajectory.
How does the increase in Toronto’s ridership compare to that of other cities? How much of the increase can be attributable to other factors like gas prices?
That leaves us with Transit City. So far, so bad. It is wishful thinking that TC will increase ridership.
By all tangible measures the legacy is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
Does Glen have a job? It’s as if he’s paid to comment. Say your thing and then give it a rest, flooding the comment section only turns people off. It’s communication 101!
I agree with Steve: Adam should immediately step down as TTC Chair.
Adam has clearly lost his moral authority to lead the TTC: he lacks the character, trust, integrity needed to credibly lead and Chair the TTC, especially its 12,000 employees, through a major crisis of confidence with riders and should voluntarily resign or be replaced as Chair.
It is not so much the personal sin of lust as his failure of character: his repeated lies and deception to The Star about his personal relationships (and his professional micro-management of the TTC) to further his Mayoral ambition: denying any personal responsibility for the TTC’s customer service woes and rider revolt; conveniently casting the blame solely on TTC Staff led by the very capable TTC CGM Gary Webster, one of the brightest, hardest-working, competent, apolitical individuals I have ever worked with—a true gentleman—that I cannot abide.
Martha Stewart was jailed, not for insider trading but for obstruction of justice, i.e. lying about her stock trade activities and falsifying her records to a Grand Jury. It is not Adam’s infidelity but his repeated lies and deceptions about it that warrants a “time-out” from the TTC.
Adam needs focuses on the personal life lessons learned the past few days, weeks and months as he sorts out his personal and professional future and works to rehabilitate his public image and to regain the public’s trust.
Adam is a very bright, hard working, ambitious young man. To err is human. Martha Stewart bounced back and so can Adam—but only after a period of sincere introspection and contemplation.
Anything the TTC does from now on, will be reported with a blurb about Mr Giambrone’s affair. It’s a distraction. That’s the problem.
I do not live in Toronto. I hear that Mr. Giambrone hasn’t done a great job at the TTC so far.
Now, it is scary to see Toronto newsmedia reporting on the personal buisness of politicians. It just goes to show how Toronto is americanizing itself.