{"id":47139,"date":"2013-12-13T09:33:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-13T14:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=47139"},"modified":"2013-12-13T09:33:23","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T14:33:23","slug":"lorinc-big-move-big-stall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/12\/13\/lorinc-big-move-big-stall\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: From the Big Move to the Big Stall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-lorinc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let me say this up front: I have enormous respect for Anne Golden and Paul Bedford. They both understand cities, and have progressive visions of what this particular city could and should become. Yet the fix on their panel\u2019s report was in from the get-go, long before Bedford and Golden set up camp in a cramped suite of offices on the ground floor of the Mowat Block earlier in the fall.<\/p>\n

It was always clear, by the panel\u2019s very existence, that Premier Kathleen Wynne and transportation minister Glen Murray didn\u2019t want to have anything to do with the capstone of the Metrolinx revenue tools recommendations \u2014 an increase in the HST \u2014 and for that reason, the policy analysts working on the Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel had their collective hands tied.<\/p>\n

Metrolinx, recall, suggested an HST hike, HOV lanes, a parking levy and development charges. The agency\u2019s officials, and its appointed board, knew that developers and the pension funds would hate the latter two suggestions. Yet Metrolinx didn\u2019t come forward with a politically tone-deaf plan. The agency was realistic enough to dismiss contentious options, like highway tolls. Its officials also faced the facts: if we are to build transit, someone\u2019s going to have to pay.<\/p>\n

But if politics killed Metrolinx\u2019s politically conscious solution, it seems strange that politics will almost surely kill its politically conscious successor \u2013 you know, the one that Murray said the government needs to \u201cown.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel\u2019s analysis is sound, as far as it goes. The gas tax, they concluded, has a better chance to alter behaviour, causing people to drive less. But, as the report notes, a substantial portion of the revenues would be born by freight and transportation companies \u2013 \u201cbusiness,\u201d as the report often says. The additional fuel tax won\u2019t alter the behaviour of these firms, but it will almost certainly increase the amount of griping we hear from manufacturers and shippers.<\/p>\n

An HST increase \u2014 which, as the panel notes, would be not just fair and equitable but decidedly lucrative \u2014 is unlikely to impact driver behaviour. True enough, but that was never the political reason for abandoning a form of taxation that has been used in regions like Los Angeles to underwrite transit expansion. Rather, look closely at the language in the report: the fuel tax hits \u201cdrivers and businesses\u201d whereas an HST hike impacts \u201cconsumers.\u201d Could it be that the policy rationale here is grounded in simple political arithmetic: there are more consumers than drivers, and the Liberals are looking to irritate the minimum number of voters.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the notion of borrowing against the new revenue streams, at a ratio of 2.5 to 1, one of the panel\u2019s recommendations. Okay, that\u2019s an option, yet isn\u2019t this idea simply a buy-now\/pay-later approach? Indeed, there\u2019s nothing to stop the province from just borrowing to pay for transit. That\u2019s been an option all along.<\/p>\n

Finally, there are a handful of apparent policy contradictions between the panel\u2019s findings and the analysis produced last spring by AECOM\/KPMG for Metrolinx. Looking at the prospect of a 0.5% corporate tax hike (worth about $190 million\/year), that exhaustive 230-page assessment had this to say: \u201cAlthough corporations benefit from the availability of the regional transportation system, there is no strict user benefit rationale for this tool (i.e. those who pay more income taxes do not necessarily derive greater benefit from the transportation system).\u201d The panel acknowledges that corporate income taxes are not widely used to raise capital for transit, yet it dismissed development charges, which are. And, in a sop to the minister, the report urged the government to \u201ccapture\u201d land value increases as a means of offsetting transit construction outlays.<\/p>\n

That particular option \u2014 which is grounded in the belief that if you build it, the developers will come \u2014 was explicitly rejected by AECOM\/KPMG as too uncertain. But Murray is enamoured by land value capture, possibly for the same reason Mayor Rob Ford loved to expectorate about having the private sector finance his subways for him: in both cases, the shell game involves selling the public on the notion that they won\u2019t need to pay to solve the congestion problem.<\/p>\n

In any event, I suspect there\u2019s little risk of anyone paying for anything any time soon. As is becoming increasingly clear, we\u2019re heading into a provincial election next spring. Do the Liberals \u2014 who are already hauling around so much political baggage it\u2019s a miracle they can get from one day to the next \u2013 intend to run on a suit of policy changes that will make life more expensive for middle class families?<\/p>\n

The question answers itself. It serves the Liberals\u2019 purposes to appear to be choosing between policy options, even though they are actually choosing not to choose. Indeed, since the government established Metrolinx in 2006, they\u2019ve had nothing but time to deal with problems that were as evident then as they are today. And look where we are, eight years on: with yet another report urging us to action.<\/p>\n

My guess is that finance minister Charles Sousa will bring down a spring budget\/election platform with a kinda-sorta-maybe partial downpayment for the [don\u2019t insert euphemism here] Relief Line (goal: shore up Fortress Toronto), and, perhaps, a pledge to deputize a GTHA caucus committee to find ever more ways to own something they don\u2019t actually wanted to own.<\/p>\n

And so the Big Move will continue to morph inexorably into the Big Stall.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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