Strong Mayor - Strong City?
 

An interesting repeat last night on Steve Paikin's The Agenda...the panel discussion talked about "Strong Mayors - Strong Cities?"

You can watch the video here:

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/

Also - what about the news reported by Nicole MacIntyre about senior advisor Ken Audziss leaving the Mayor's office...

http://hallmarks.thespec.com/2008/07....html#comments

We definitely don't have a strong mayor. Unless something major happens Mayor Fred will likely be a one-term mayor like every other mayor since amalgamation.

I think Mayor Fred could be stronger, but I do feel sorry for him.

He's had some great idea's but just couldn't strong-arm council for support. Hate to admit it, but a mayor needs to do that on occasion.

Council has deteriorated so badly during his tenure that the process has really been bogged down. :(

Better than DiIanni though.

If Mayor Fred had Di Ianni leadership style and kept his idea's he would then be a good mayor.

People criticize Mayor Eisenberger for not showing more "leadership", but the fact is that in Ontario's Weak Mayor system, the mayor is only one vote on council. Granted, the mayor's office has a few staffers to do background work, but it's nothing like the American or British Strong Mayor systems, in which the mayor has the power to set the agenda.

My understanding from observing Eisenberger is that his style is to work in the background to create bureaucratic 'space' for his initiatives and build institutional support so they have a better chance of taking hold.

A good example of this approach is light rail. He started by changing the city's Bus Rapid Transit Office to a Rapid Transit Office (dropping "Bus" from the title) and getting a budget passed by council for a staffer. He also angled to get on the Metrolinx board and have Hamilton included in the MoveOntario 2020 initiative. Once the province earmarked some capital money for Hamilton, he was able to encourage the public works department to launch a feasibility study on light rail vs. bus rapid transit.

He also made some supportive noises about LRT in public (e.g. as early as September 2007), but he certainly has not forced the issue. Given that he's working in a Weak Mayor system, advocating more forcefully earlier on may well have been counterproductive.

Certainly the public works staff were not that interested in exploring light rail at first. When I met with Scott Stewart last November, PW still saw LRT as a long-term (i.e. 15-20 years) prospect. I'm deeply gratified to see how truly enthusiastic they have become since going through the feasibility study and receiving the tremendous public support (plus I volunteer with Hamilton Light Rail, so it's near and dear to my heart).

Neither were most councillors. Aside from Brian McHattie, Bob Bratina and maybe Sam Merulla, most councillors didn't even know what light rail was, let alone whether it would be a good idea.

Now the empirical, business and popular cases for light rail are much stronger than they were a year ago, and it's much easier for politicians to go out on a limb and get behind it.

When phase 2 of the rapid transit initiative comes up to a vote in September, it will benefit from extensive study, wide recognition, and strong public approval. Councillors inclined to like the idea will be able to support it on a sound basis, and councillors inclined not to like the idea will be under pressure to defend their opposition against the abundant evidence.

Without Eisenberger's background work to foster such a political environment, the light rail initiative would likely not have gained any traction at all. The Mayor's work is not sufficient in itself to bring LRT to fruition, but I think it was a necessary prerequisite to the policy and advocacy that followed.

The limitation to this approach, of course, is that it ultimately requires commitment from a majority of councillors, and our ward system is set up to encourage councillors to put their own ward interests first, regardless of either well-understood urban development principles or staff recommendations. See, for example, the recent council votes on the Downtown Transportation Master Plan and approval of big box developments on land zoned for industrial employment.

That's essentially a limitation of the Weak Mayor system in general. Since you only have one vote, you have to lobby your fellow councillors to support you and hope you can persuade them that a) the initiative benefits their ward; or b) they should set aside their own ward interests for the greater good.

The other approach, of course, is to propose only those initiatives for which you can already cobble together a majority of councillors to support it. The limitation of that approach is that you're limited to initiatives which will appeal to a big enough cross-section of parochial councillors.

Because city council is so weighted to the suburbs (i.e. the number of suburban councillors is grossly disproportionate to the suburban population), that makes it difficult to get progress on initiatives that benefit the majority of citizens living in the urban area. The suburban skew was a political compromise to sweeten the forced amalgamation deal for suburban townships, but it has effectively produced political gridlock for amalgamated cities like Hamilton and Toronto.

That amalgamation gridlock may ultimately be a bigger problem then the Weak Mayor system. Under it, council is intrinsically divided on itself.

It's important to distinguish we are talking about a stong system, not an individual strong or weak mayor.

It is against common sense that a councillor who is voted into position only by people in a ward, has the same vote as a mayor who is voted on by all citizens. I took the time to watch this last night, and it was very interesting.

While I can see the benefits of a stronger mayor system, I also have concerns if it's not done without checks & balances. There would be nothing worse than a strong, bad mayor........ Perhaps a party system similar to provincial and federal politics would work? It's certainly how Toronto council has shaped up along right/left (party) lines.

None of this would have been possible if former Mayor Di Ianni didn't have the leadership to have Hamilton included the GTTA. He took a lot of slack for advocating Hamilton to be included into Toronto's transit agency.

I assume you mean "flak", not "slack" (er, thanks, highwater!).

To clarify, I wasn't comparing Eisenberger's achievements to Di Ianni's. Rather, I was using his approach as a case study in the structural limitations of the Weak Mayor system. As FairHamilton points out, the term "Weak Mayor" in this context refers to the legal role and powers of the elected position of Mayor in municipal law, not to a given mayor's style or level of effectiveness.

Certainly there are differences in how the two Mayors worked to achieve their objectives, and it may be instructive to study whether Di Ianni's approach was a more effective way of working within the Weak Mayor system than Eisenberger's. However, I'm not sure how useful such a comparison would be in considering the Weak Mayor system per se.

The problem I have with Mayor Fred is that he doesn't bring anything new to council and when he does council shoots it down.

Metrolinx, Lister Block, waterfront, City Hall renovation all something Di Ianni started and Mayor Fred is just continuing on. He tried something different for getting council to support building a new City Hall, but nope he didn't have the leadership to convince enough councilors.

Lately majority of council's vote are either extremely tight or tied. Total lack of leadership from the Mayor to guide these councilors. Mayor Di Ianni was known to summit each councilor to his office before an important vote. It was no secret Bratina or Braden and Di Ianni would have a brawl in the Mayor's office.

With Mayor Fred it seems none of that happens and Mayor Fred just lets councilors vote on their own.

Actually, it's "flak". :D

There is no doubt now that the role of Mayor in civic politics is a weak role. Not only is he but one vote on the council floor, his role as chair of council strips him of that vote as well, for the most part. As chair, the Mayor cannot place a vote on any motion unless it is to break a tie. So he really has no influence within the realm of council meetings. All his influence is offline in backroom dealing. I am certainly not in favour of a system that promotes backroom deals.

I would like to see council vote for a chair much in the same manner as Parliament votes for a speaker. Alternatively, the mayor could nominate a citizen outside of council for the position of chair, then have council vote to confirm the appointment. That would allow the mayor to more actively participate in council, during both debates and votes.

Another item that I think would strengthen the mayoral role is to reintroduce an executive council. The mayor should be permitted to select three councillors to act as a kind of mini-cabinet. This would definitely increase the realm of influence a mayor would have to ensure a productive council is in place.

I am not really in favour of a party-based political system in municipal politics. Historically this has not worked well. There is a certain quality to having a councillor that does not feel obliged to tow the party line simply because it is the party line, especially when dealing with bread-and-butter municipal issues that are more pragmatic and less dogmatic.

As far as criticism of Mayor Fred goes, IMO it has been overly harsh of late, and manifested mainly by DiIanni loyalists still smarting from his humbling defeat in 2006. After all, Mayor Fred has some impressive achievements less than halfway through his mandate. First off, the integrity commissioner is well on its way to becoming a reality. Secondly, he finally closed the deal to renovate the Lister building, somwething several of his predecessors were not able to do (Mancinelli himself said it was Eisenberger that saved the deal last month). In addition, he managed to make council shift its train of thought on transit so LRT is now the focus, and not BRT. Also, the Gore park pedestrianization was not being given serious consideration before he focussed the discussion and included its feasibility in the five-year review of Hamilton's transportation plan.

Setting aside the differences in approach between Di Ianni and Eisenberger, I think it's interesting to look at the differences in how their defeats are covered by the pundits.

When Di Ianni lost an initiative (e.g. the Maple Leaf deal), it was reported that he was obstructed by special interest groups and malconents from moving the city forward. When Eisenberger loses an initiative (e.g. when it looked like LIUNA was going to turn down the Lister deal), it is reported that he lacks the leadership to "guide" council to vote for his initiatives.

other than city hall, you can't credit DiIanni for any of those things.
He's the one who pulled off the backroom deals that led to this Lister mess in the first place.
Metrolinx was NOT his idea, and NO WAY in heck would he be pushing for LRT like Mayor Fred is.
Waterfront is going on for years. had nothing to do with DiIanni.
He was useless unless you love suburban sprawl.

Wow... and we just built the redhill expressway. In 50 years I wonder how much money our children will spend to bury the redhill?

I like Mayor Fred and I think he's a good person but I just think his leadership style absolutely stinks. I believe I even mentioned his lack of leadership within like 6 months into his new role as Mayor.

His first major piece of work was the anti idling bylaw. He couldn't even get councillors to support it the first year. Second year comes and only gets an approval but no money to have an officer patrolling the anti idling bylaw. I believe there's still isn't an anti idling bylaw officer.

Next up the pesticide ban. Couldn't get council to support that. Lucky the province came in and banned it. Yet our neighbour Burlington got it banned at the same time Hamilton council was reviewing it.

Next up is the most confusing council session I have ever witnessed. The plastic bag debate. That session dragged on past midnight. Had over 4 different votes. When the Spec asked Mayor Fred what council just approved he couldn't give an answer. I didn't even know what council had approved. Still to this day I still don't know when the city will ban plastic bags.

Building a new City Hall was an completely embarrassment as I believe Mayor Fred only got perhaps 2 votes of approval to build a new City Hall instead.

The integrity office is another classic case of Mayor Fred's leadership. He is halfway through his mandate and finally we have an integrity commissioner. Even though this was one of the very first pieces of issue addressed in council.

Last month with the Lister Block deal Mayor Fred couldn't even get council to support a deal that LIUNA agreed with. It was something like $50,000 difference than the original agreement that currently all side has agreed on.

When council voted for the original agreement that LIUNA threaten to abandon the Lister Block and the entire block Mayor Fred takes off for a vacation. HUH?! Couldn't he book his vacation AFTER June 30th and stayed in Hamilton to sweet talk with LIUNA instead of being on the phone?

geez, so now we're criticizing him for getting the deal done with LIUNA?? which is it? good leadership or not??

I'm just stressing the fact that Mayor Fred took off on a vacation after council just approved a deal that LIUNA threaten to walk away from. So it was obvious the deal would be dead yet he took off for a vacation. That’s poor leadership in my opinion.

That's something I wouldn't want a Mayor to do when there's still a few days to try and smooth things over before the deadline is over. If this deal was truly dead and Mayor Fred was out of town on vacation I imagine there would be a lot of complaints.

I don't begrudge him for that, he got the job done and ultimately that's what he set out to do no matter where he conducted the business. After all Mancinelli was in Florida, so the discussion would have been on the phone no matter where the mayor was sitting.

yea, they voted and that was it.
the guy can't cancel all his vacations and chase around these idiots who are just trying to screw the city.

Well this thread was moving along just fine until we hit July and then the Eisenberger supporters just clammed up. :haha:

interestingly enough, July is when city hall empties out for 2 months for summer vaction.
so unless you were hoping that someone would provide a blow-by-blow description on Eisenberger's vacations there wasn't much to write here.

Vacation eh? interesting....... I thought it may have had something to do with "tapegate". :D

"Tapegate" turned out to be a a non-issue. The lawyer who investigated the incident concluded that Eisenberger's actions were "wholly proper" to his role as Mayor and that while he technically did violate the code of conduct, it was undertaken in a manner consistent with the Mayor's duties under Section 226.1 of the Municipal Act, 2001. He recommended that council take no action against the Mayor, and council voted to concur.

......a "non-issue" in a Court of Law....but a BIG issue for the voters of Hamilton come next election. :D

I doubt it.

Hello brother flar...Tell me, why do you doubt it?...is it because he won't be running in the next election???

If you assume Eisenberger's running again, the man considered to be his most likely rival was the other party in "Tapegate," whose actions -- actively leaking Eisenberger's conversation to the press rather than delivering the evidence to the city's legals -- seem of lower character than the mayor's. On top of which, the mayor's conversation was deemed a non-criminal contravention of code by an independent lawyer and council voted by a wide margin not to censure him. If you spoke to most voters today they might not even know it happened. A year and a half from now, I doubt that will have changed. Clark, meanwhile, may be seen as man who values power over principle. That impression might be indelible. Perhaps more so considering the third party involved in the proceedings. Not speaking for flar. Just saying.

Kind of like DiIanni's campagn spending wasn't an issue. He didn't really mean to do it, it was an accident.

Enough of the BS here guys, Burger boy is totally out to lunch if he thinks he has any shot at another term.

Eisenberger is the first mayor in years to produce positive change in the city. This has not gone unnoticed.

This is basically what my answer would have been.

OK guys enough of the generalities. "Positive change?"........give us some specifics please???

I beg to differ. This is where you and I will have to disagree. The same thing is going to happen for the next election like happened in the last one and that is it will be a protest vote.

In the last election, Fred won not because people wanted to see Fred in there as the Mayor, Fred won because people didn't want to see a repeat and have the "other guy" back in there again. Same thing will happen the next time around. People will vote for the "other guy" because they won't want to see a repeat and have Fred back in office for another term.

There's a difference this time, DiIanni was corrupt, people believed he was corrupt and he was convicted. The perception that DiIanni is corrupt, which is probably more than a perception, has followed him and destroyed his chances for public office. Eisenberger hasn't done anything and the general perception is that he isn't corrupt.

Inasmuch as people care about municipal elections (and they typically don't), being found guilty of (unknowingly?) violating the province's Municipal Elections Act is qualitatively different than (unknowingly?) violating council's intramural Code of Conduct. And as I say, the fact that his presumed chief opponent coloured outside of the lines will probably render this politically neutral in November 2010. Plus history will have conspired to alter the campaign dynamics between now and then.

In any case, what's left of Hamilton's manufacturing industry is about to be blasted with both barrels. If the city sees 10-12% unemployment as economists predict, the next election will be about the economy and nothing else.

And with a lot of the larger companies not Canadian owned like they were sure puts a new light on the whole situation.

I'm confident the 1/3 of the population of Hamilton that votes won't care about this Eisenberger indiscretion.

The difference between the Di Ianni and Eisenberger indiscretions is primarily one thing, money. People care about money, they don't care about minor lapses in a code of conduct.

My prediction this will be a non-issue in 2010. To think anyone will remember this issue, even when reminded by mayoral competitors, seems to me to be improbable.

2-way street conversions
commuter bike lanes
redesign of the farmer's market and library
streetscaping of king st
ethics commissioner
public input on issues like Light Rail and City Hall
making Light Rail a priority - its crazy an urban city like Hamilton has such poor public transit
providing the proper environment so the James St North arts community could flourish

These are just a few things he's done for us that stick out for me personally. Eisenberger has helped move the city forward for the benefit of its citizens instead of like the previous mayor who did things for the benefit of his favourite cronies while the city itself continued to rot.

Do the rest of the research yourself and inform yourself. Hamilton is an urban city that has been held back for far too long.

He's done more to further Hamilton's attempts at revitalizing itself as a real city than our previous 25 years of crap mayors.
although, I wouldn't give him or anyone at city hall too much credit for the James North art district. Two-way conversions certainly were the first and most important step. Other than that, it's been all grassroots.
It's nice to have a mayor who doesn't regard everything between Dundas and Stoney Creek as wasteland. I'm still having a tough time getting used to it.

I don't think DiIanni's past scandal affected the mayoral election so much as the fact that in spite of his past, he was still accepting corporate donations, including from the same people who had over-contributed the first time around! In contrast, Fred was not accepting any corporate or union donations of any kind. I believe that's what swayed many people. It certainly swayed me. Fred has now set the bar. Anyone wishing to run against him in the next election will also have to forgo corporate and union support. Should be interesting.

Both Burgerboy and DiIanni are cut from the same cloth, neither of them are above the skullduggery we have seen from our municipal politicians. Guys like Collins, Jackson, Clark, etc. who I think will take a run at the office in the next election bring nothing to the table except more failure.

If you want to see some real change in the city, my sugesstion would be to vote for a total outsider in the next election in both you ward and mayoral race. That would really send a message that the old order is dead.

Thanks for that list. An interesting one that I think is debatable. For example why do you have LRT on the list? I took a walk around town last night and I didn't see any LRT lines here in Hamilton. Right now, at this stage of the game, all that we have when it comes to LRT is an IDEA....a good idea that even the Non-Eisenberger folks like myself support 100%. But to give Eisenberger the credit for LRT is like placing the cart a head the horse sort of speak. Its also like giving the weatherman on TV all the credit in the world for it being a warm, bright, sunny day. He just happened to get lucky that day and was at the right place at the right time. If Di Ianni was in power right now down at City Hall he too would support the idea of LRT coming into town but then the question then becomes, would Ryan McGreal be ready to give credit to Larry Di Ianni for making LRT a priority in Hamilton? hmmmm :D

I too have my list for Eisenberger and my list is actually a lot longer than yours. My list is a list of everything that is wrong with Eisenberger as the Mayor of Hamilton and a list of everything that he's made a mistake in. Unfortunately for the Eisenberger camp I am not about to present my list right now because to do so would give his camp the opportunity to do something about it since he still has 2-years left in his term. So for me the timing is of the essence here. The best time for me to present a list like the one I have would be one month leading to the next municipal election, 2 years from now.

The time is ticking away and the time is running out for Eisenberger.....tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic.............

I've met, corresponded and talked with both politicians, and my impression is that they're not "cut from the same cloth", except insofar as they're both municipal politicians.

It's not just their policies, which after all are not much different: it's their personalities, their styles of management, and their passions. I won't rehash their differences in management style, as I wrote a long piece earlier in this thread.

In terms of their passions, Di Ianni focused most of his energy on competing the Red Hill Valley Parkway (and attracting industrial employers in highway-accessible business parks) and ramming through a new industrial park around the airport; whereas Eisenberger has focused on light rail transit and active transportation improvements, anti-idling and environmental improvement, and ethics reform.

Eisenberger generally supports the RHVP and airport-related development, though he didn't stick his neck out for the former and wants the latter halved in size. Similarly, Di Ianni generally supports light rail and environmental improvement, though as Mayor he didn't stick his neck out for the former and spent little time on the latter (his recent vocal endorsement of Dion's Green Shift notwithstanding).

Both emphasized downtown revitalization, though Di Ianni's approach was to wrangle backroom deals with developers to pour public money into building replacement (a deal that Eisenberger ultimately saved) whereas Eisenberger's approach is to transform existing public amenities so they act as anchors for urban reinvestment (the Gore).

These may not be radical differences, but they do speak to significant incremental differences in the priorities of the two mayors: where they direct their office resources, and where they spend their political capital.

LOL...trust me, you can release your little 'list' anytime you want. Nobody will care.

So let me understand this correctly. You have feedback on how the Mayor can better benefit Hamilton, but you are going to keep it from everyone (including the mayor and his team) because you have a problem with the mayor. Is my understanding correct?

If it is then that's very un-civic and narrow minded of you. Please explain to me how that benefits Hamilton?

If you released your list now, and it contained many great suggestions and ideas that went un-acted upon by the mayor in the next 2 years. Then I think you'd have a really great case for your opinion of the current mayor.

Hiding the list from the public seems to me to be petty and casts you in a less than favourable light.

After the provincial funding announcement, staff and council were still uninterested in light rail (with the exception of councillors McHattie and Bratina). I talked to senior Public Works staff a year ago and they still saw LRT as a long-term idea - ten to fifteen years at least. It wasn't for another month or two that they even decided to launch the feasibility study, and it wasn't until this April/May that they started to become truly enthusiastic about it.

Eisenberger was already working toward LRT before the MoveOntario 2020 announcement. One of his first acts as mayor was to change the name of the Bus Rapid Transit office to the Rapid Transit Office and convince Council to approve a staff budget. He also started talking to staff about making LRT a bigger priority and studying its feasibility as a shorter term project.

He pushed to have Hamilton included in the Metronlinx purview and secured a seat on the board. (My understanding is that Di Ianni had also done some groundwork prior to the municipal election in this regard.)

It was because Hamilton was part of the GTTA that we could start think about capital funding through Metrolinx, and it was because Hamilton had a staffed rapid transit office that we could actually launch the rapid transit feasibility study. None of that would have happened without the behind-the-scenes work Eisenberger did to get LRT on the staff agenda.

There's a lot of grumbling right now that it looks like Hamilton will be one of the later recipients of Metrolinx capital funding due to the less advanced state of our planning, but the fact is that we would still be at square one if not for Eisenberger's advocacy and we would be way down on the Metrolinx agenda.

At the same time, Eisenberger was one of the first public figures in Hamilton to start publicly endorsing light rail (for example in his September 2007 State of the City speech), again long before it moved into the political mainstream.

Let me state clearly that had these things happened when Di Ianni was mayor, and had Di Ianni made LRT as much a priority as Eisenberger has, I would have no compunctions about crediting him for it.

When Di Ianni recently wrote an opinion piece for Chris Ecklund's blog in support of LRT, I was happy to publicize it and draw attention to it, just as I was happy to publicize the endorsements of the Chamber of Commerce, the Realtors Association, Conservative MP David Sweet, former regional chair Terry Cooke, and everyone else across the political, economic, and urban spectrum who sees LRT as a positive investment for the city.

Mark Chamberlain, currently citizen of the year, hinted me might run for Mayor.

In case you don't know who Mark Chamberlain is.....

He's the founder and former CEO of Wescam. Currently President and CEO of Trivaris. Pretty sure he was born and raised in Hamilton. Went to Waterloo University. A poverty activist, Chair of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty. And best of all he's the Chair of Metrolinx.

http://www.metrolinx.com/en/bioMarkChamberlain.aspx

An impressive resume.

Very exciting. How did Chamberlain get the inside scoop on your plans, though? :-)

Sorry should have been "he" opps.