Regional districts are taking on the duties of provincial governments. Is it time to step back?
What was once a simple sewer, water and garbage-disposal utility has become a bureaucratic, democratically unaccountable spending machine. It’s time to move the Metro Vancouver Regional District back to basics.
Local decision-making is the best decision-making — that’s the core of the concern many Lower Mainland taxpayers have with the Metro Vancouver Regional District. They aren’t comfortable with a fourth level of government taxing them without representation.
While the current Langley Township debate over leaving Metro Vancouver is likely just sabre-rattling, there are ways to reform metro into a fairer, more taxpayer-friendly agency.
Metro chairman Greg Moore notes that 84 per cent of the regional district’s $614.5-million annual budget goes to building, operating and paying the debt on the region’s water, sewer and garbage-collection infrastructure. That is precisely the work metro should be doing — and only be doing.
Unfortunately, metro bureaucrats and politicians love to insert themselves into things they have no reason to be in.
What Moore is admitting is that 16 per cent — or $96.1 million annually — of metro’s budget is being spent on non-essential items or things the province or individual municipalities are better equipped to oversee.
Worse yet, the decisions made on these expenditures are done by mayors and councillors who are appointed by their own councils but not directly accountable for the votes they cast at the metro table. A decision that is bad for Maple Ridge, for example, can be imposed without Maple Ridge’s representative agreeing. Maple Ridge taxpayers have no ability to vote out the metro reps from Vancouver or Burnaby — they are at the mercy of the mayors of those two communities, whose slates control the seats on the metro board of directors.
This happens a lot, especially on planning issues. Metro’s planners, unaccountable to any directly elected official or public-hearing process, act as though they alone have the ability to determine how the region should develop — not the municipalities that have official community plans, local expertise, hold public meetings and are led by directly elected mayors and councillors.
Land-use decisions should be made by politicians directly elected in the cities where that growth occurs — not by metro bureaucrats or politicians from other metro communities.
Most of metro’s non-core functions could be taken on by other levels of government that are better equipped to do the work.
Metro’s social-housing functions, air-quality mandate, 911 and agriculture work could be absorbed by various provincial government agencies.
Parks and planning functions could be taken over by local municipalities. Arts and other grants could be scrapped, allowing taxpayers to decide what causes they would like to support with their hard-earned money.
Unincorporated areas could be added to existing municipalities if they so choose.
If a taxpayer doesn’t like the way a provincial government or local council handles these services, they can vote them out. Today, they simply have to grin and bear it unless they live in Vancouver or Burnaby, where the power of the metro board lies.
The three remaining metro services — water, sewer and garbage collection — could be operated as utilities run by boards with a mandate to deliver good, safe services as cheaply as possible. Some services, especially garbage collection, could be privatized or at the very least contracted out. The tax burden for most Lower Mainland property owners would be reduced by refocusing metro on core services.
Langley’s ongoing fight with Metro Vancouver will likely go nowhere — it is virtually impossible to escape from a regional district.
But if it lays the foundation for a debate on exactly what businesses metro should be operating, it will have been a worthwhile exercise.
- post by Jordan Bateman
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So you feel privatization saves a lot of money? can you address the costs to the local economy and province when jobs that people can earn a living from are replaced with crappy paying jobs? See, I feel like the last thing we should be doing is decreasing the living standards of people as this city grows more expensive. I would rather see people have disposable income, than save money through these means. we have done a lot of this and I fail to see the net benefit..especially when the money saved goes to something frivolous.
“can you address the costs to the local economy and province when jobs that people can earn a living from are replaced with crappy paying jobs?”
If their pay is above market value then they are not earning a living, they are taking a living, from those attempting to honestly earn it in the private sector. The cost to the displaced government workers is that they have to complete with the rest of us.
The only thing that takes wages above market value is government force. Anything that takes wages above market value causes higher unemployment for someone else. More government creates more unemployment as it expands.
I watched 3 city workers with clipboards walking behind the garbage truck in my alley the other day, looking through everyone’s trash. No private company would waste money and resources like that.
“The only thing that takes wages above market value is government force.” How does one know what market value is? Are guilds like lawyers paid market value? Doctors? How about wages at companies that have regulatory protection, subsidies, monopolies. Or companies that choose not to pay a living wage because they know that tax payers will pick up the slack with various income supplements (any company that pays below a living page is receiving an indirect subsidy from tax payers).
“No private company would waste money and resources like that.” I see private companies wasting time and resources all the time. Ever worked at a large company? Did you find it to be perfectly efficient?I have been on many factory floors in the US that had people walking around with clipboards. Come to think of it, I was one of them. And we were doing studies on operating efficiencies.
And yet, when you hear about the jobless rate decreasing, the primary factor is the private sector – hiring.
Very few ‘new jobs’ are layered in at the public sector.
I believe that the core idea here is that if a tier of administration is not elected its functions should be minimized. That makes good sense to me. There will always be some functions that cross municipalities and are better addressed through direct co-ordination than by a blundering provincial or federal government so we will always need some mechanism for co-ordination. Water, waste and transportation seem like the prime candidates.
Imagine a world in which the federal and provincial government had no direct powers of taxation and all taxes flowed up from the local level. I wonder how that would work?
More common sense from City Caucus. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Keep telling the truth City Caucus! Great job. Government should only be doing what only government can do and nothing else. Save us the insane level of taxes please.
I agree.
As I said in one of my last tweets “Commonsense in any level of Government is becoming so rare to find, that it should be seen as a … Superpower!”
And you are familiar with superpowers, Karla, am I right?
Ok birdy, so what is market value? What do you think people should be making in a city like Vancouver? enough to scrape by? Enough to pay their rent but not eat? Enough to have money to spend in the community and put some away? I personality don’T think anyone in the public service should be making more than 150,000 at any level of govt or management, they should pursue interests privately otherwise. I also think having a lot of people making min wage, which is very very hard to scrape by on, causes a lot of unrest, turnover, a loss of skill and experience and a drain of talent, not to mention poverty, desperation and crime. Why would you want to create jobs that cause poverty?? Btw, when people earn more they PAY MORE TAX, so calm down. It’s when a private company pays them peanuts that your dollars are subsidizing them, in one way or another.
Jenables when a government employee pays taxes all they are doing is returning tax dollars back to the government.The government produces no profit.Only the private sector produces profit and that tax is what pays government workers.Maybe the thing to do is cut government pay by the amount of taxes they give back and leave those moneys in the governments coffers which would also save the cost of re-collecting those tax dollars.
Gman, I am talking about a standard of decent jobs in our communities. based on the fallout from privatizing vital jobs in the healthcare sector and hydro alone, I am not convinced the answer is relying on for profit private companies to save us money. You say only the private sector produces profit for the government? Not if they are producing low paying jobs, not only does the govt not get income tax, but they don’t get gst/pst/hst from any spending that might have happened locally, if these employees had disposable income. More people with less money does not stimulate the local economy. Btw, you mention the cost of re-collecting..How so?? Don’t we have to file taxes every year no matter who we work for? Or perhaps you meant foreign companies with foreign workers, like providence health care? yep, we don’t collect those
tax dollars, and therefore don’t incur the cost of collecting any tax dollars. yep.
I agree with Jenables on basic point, a government or company that pays less than a living wage is being subsidized by other tax payers.
gmann’s comments are incorrect. Government economic activity can be net positive. If the government decided to develop a resource, invested in roads and other infrastructure, job training, etc. that investment can have an economic payback. The government could even decide to cut the trees or drill the oil itself. Whether an orgnaization is in the public or private sector does not determine its economic contribution.
That does not mean that governments should take on these activities. The problem with governments is that they are top down, do not have enough diversity and they are less likely to fail (go out of business). Going out of businessm (creative destruction) is a good thing as it lets an economy try different alternatives and pick this best rather than pretending that it knows the best in advance.
You have presented an important perspective on the region’s governance mechanisms, or lack thereof Jordon. Perhaps there are some functions that can better be taken over by other levels of government.
However, the region operates with respect to economics, employment, transportation, and social, entertainment and leisure activities largely as a single entity. And, given there is no political will for another mega-unicity the Lower Mainland will probably continue to stumble along more or less as it has for the past forty odd years.
Your critique of Metro’s planning authority is important, and needs to be overhauled. What the solution is is less clear. Past experience says that function cannot be handled by the Province and it certainly can’t be done by individual cities. A start would be to elect at large Councillors who served both on their respective Councils as well as on the Metro Board with an equal number representing individual wards. A more balanced joint venture formula might help make land-use decision-making more accountable. But, it’s difficult to see that this key function along with transportation planning can be done by anyone other than some sort of regional body.