Ford should have known he’d break promises

Marcus Gee, The Globe and Mail:

When he was running for mayor last year, Rob Ford made two explicit promises to the voters of Toronto.

The first was that his plan to trim spending and “stop the gravy train” would not mean any cuts to city services. “I will assure you that services will not be cut, guaranteed,” he said on Oct. 8, two weeks before winning election.

The second was that there would be no layoffs. In a statement released on YouTube on Sept. 27, he said he would reduce the number of city employees through attrition. “No need for layoffs.”

Now it looks as if he will break both promises. City hall is considering a whole menu of service cuts as Mr. Ford seeks to wipe out a $774-million budget shortfall. City council is to meet next month to consider cutting back on everything from libraries to policing to street cleaning.

As for layoffs, Mr. Ford came close to admitting on Friday that they are inevitable.

If this year’s crunch is especially bad, it is at least partly because Mr. Ford himself chose to begin his term by killing the vehicle-registration tax and freezing property taxes for one year, making it much harder to balance the budget. Now he says that drastic spending cuts are needed to avoid tax hikes of “20, 25, 30 per cent.”

Mr. Ford ran for office claiming to be something different than the usual smooth-talking politician. He was the no-nonsense ordinary guy who would cut through the baloney and tell it like it is. As the whole city knows now – and should have known then – he was peddling a line of guff. The idea that he could cut spending, taxes and debt without cutting any services or putting a single person out of work was an obvious fantasy from the start.

Continue reading here.