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TTC takeover

With the leadership of the TTC sharply divided over Toronto’s transit plans, the mayor is seeking a major shakeup of the commission’s board that would see a majority of its serving councillors replaced by unelected private citizens.

A motion approved by Rob Ford’s executive committee Monday would change the composition of the board, currently made up of nine councillors, to include five citizen members and four members of council.

The mixed-member board would be similar to those at other city agencies, and proponents of the plan say that getting expert input from those in the private sector would be a boon for the TTC. Desired criteria listed in the motion include experience in business management, customer service, and labour relations.

“You’re running a business,” says Councillor Norm Kelly, who sits on both the TTC board and the executive committee. “So I think it’s important to reach out and bring in as many people as possible familiar with different aspects of business, like planning and accounting.”

But given the recent council revolt led by TTC chair Karen Stintz, not to mention Councillor Doug Ford’s subsequent insistence that the commission “needs an enema,” some suggest that the mayor is trying to take greater control of the board in order to push through his flagging underground transit plans.

“You can smell the mayor’s agenda a mile away,” says Councillor Joe Mihevc, a former TTC vice-chair. “This is so clearly and unambiguously an attempt to impose control rather than bring different skill sets to the TTC.”

The citizen members would be chosen through the city’s normal appointment process and be subject to council approval, but would arguably hold more sway than their councillor counterparts on the board. Not only would they outnumber council commissioners, they would also serve four-year terms while councillors would be re-appointed every two years. The chair of the TTC would still be held by a councillor, while the vice-chair would go to a citizen.

Mihevc’s argument that this is nothing but a power grab is muddied by the fact that the TTC board approved the skakeup before Stintz’s spat with Ford. At a December meeting eight commissioners, including Stintz, backed the idea of citizen board members. If her rift with the mayor has changed her mind, she hasn’t said. She is currently on vacation and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Adding citizens to the board also isn’t likely to make it easier for Ford to remove Stintz as chair. Only council can oust her, and a majority of councillors gave her their support at the special session last week that revived much of the Transit City light rail plan.

Another strike against the power-grab theory is that if Ford is attempting to appoint citizens who are willing to do his bidding, it’s difficult to imagine any layperson being more loyal to him than the current crop of TTC commissioners. Aside from Stintz, Councillor John Parker, and Councillor Maria Augimeri, the board is stacked with some of Ford’s closest allies, like Kelly, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, and Councillor Vincent Crisanti.

Last month Ford’s allies on the board showed they can effectively keep Stintz in check, when they blocked a report she requested on the Eglinton Crosstown line that was expected to be unfavourable to the mayor’s designs.

Augimeri is the one commissioner who has come out against citizen members, and she believes history shows it’s best to keep the board an all-elected affair. She points to the 1980s, when a citizen-dominated board used TTC funds to purchase shares in an airline.

“When we had unelected persons we found that things were being done behind the scenes. Backroom deals were going on,” she says. “Unelected people are unaccountable.”

Others argue that there are already experts working at the TTC, but they’re being ignored by the Ford administration. A recently leaked report authored by TTC staff on a possible Sheppard subway extension has been on the mayor’s desk for a year. It found the density on Sheppard doesn’t warrant underground transit, and Ford has yet to make it public.

“If we bring in different board members, are they going to be directing TTC staff to write reports in a different way?” asks Jamie Kirkpatrick of transit advocacy group TTCRiders. “If we’re not going to listen to the staff that we have, how is this going to help anything?”

Council will debate changes to the TTC board at its meeting on March 5.

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