Tuesday’s Headlines

2 comments

1. Marcus Gee is right that the THC’s spending (with “lavish” used every time it was mentioned on Metro Morning) is a gift. (And the comments for that article shows how “gifted” his supporters really are.)

   He just needs a few more gifts like that. Hmm, one $200,000 in “lavish” spending taken care of….if Ford can find one of these every day, it will be a mere 3,875 days or a but under eleven years to take care of the looming $775-million shortfall in the city’s budget.

   I don’t necessarily know if $200,000 in expenses is “lavish”. I do know that Ford, as can be expected, is making gravy of the small issues while dismissing huge future budget issues as “not what we’re dealing with right now”.

2. Ed, the media focus on the chocolates and spas because that’s what is tangible to them. But what the report made clear was a culture of waste and mismanagement. The items that seemed to get relatively little media attention was the extent to which sole sourcing was done — and the extent to which large contracts would be divided up so as to deliberately avoid (most people would say deliberately “contravene”) any established processes regarding getting bids for contracts over a certain amount. As the report indicated this likely led to wasting millions of dollars so competitive bidding was in place for major purchases. I’d say these are extremely serious issues. That the appropriate level of oversight never seemed to be exercised at any level is also an extremely serious issue.
   I don’t agree with Ford’s use of the media to ask the Board members resign. But I don’t see how they can even pretend to be fulfilling their duties given what has come out. In terms of the legitimacy of the Board members to fulfill their mandated role, I would say that was deep-sixed that when they decided to “invest” the $75m TCHC they received from the city (from the sale of Toronto Hydro Telecom) for a “TCHC Good Repair Fund” in the stock market… a move that resulted in the loss of over $40million. For whatever reason, there seems to have been very little coverage of this (save this story from today http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/sueann_levy/2011/03/01/17457016.html ). But most people who understand Board duties would see this as a wreckless disregard for the “fiduciary duties” that Board members are required to exercise. I also think it’s a very serious issue that Derek Ballantyne, the much lauded former CEO of TCHC, seems to have been shuffled off to the top post at Build Toronto even as there seems to have been some concern about how things were done on his watch. This does not look good for either the current or former TCHC CEO. And it doesn’t look good for the record of the previous mayor.