Most of us are pretty sure that government suffers from inefficiency. However, contrary to Rob Ford's logic, eliminating these inefficiencies and cutting services outright are not the same thing. Earlier this month, the City of Toronto announced a cost-saving initiative. And for once, it was uncontroversial—a genuine good idea.
Toronto Employment and Social Services announced that it would phase out welfare cheques and replace them with debit cards. For the roughly one-third of social services recipients (about 35,000 people) who currently are still not on the direct-deposit system—in most cases because they do not have bank accounts—this means an end to waiting by the mailbox for the life-saving envelope to arrive and, perhaps more importantly, an end to punishingly high cheque-cashing fees. Moreover, the changeover is expected to save the city between $1 million and $2.5 million per year. It’s cheaper and it provides better service to citizens. How excellent is that?
One suspects that when voters bought into Mayor Rob Ford’s waste-slashing austerity campaign during last year’s election campaign, this is the kind of thing they thought they’d see a lot. No service cuts and no layoffs, he promised—simply finding efficiencies and eliminating waste, he said, would both cut the budget enough to allow tax breaks and provide better services to residents.
All of us—or most of us, anyway—are pretty sure that government suffers from a lot of inefficiency and waste. A key part of the argument put forward by advocates of privatization is that waste is such an inherent feature of public services that it in itself justifies contracting things out to the private sector. But even many people who are ideological supporters of a strong government workforce complain about bloated bureaucracy and wasteful processes.
When we gripe about it, I suspect most of us have in mind the four-worker-one-shovel construction jobs we see every time we wander past an infrastructure project site or the reams of seemingly pointless paperwork required to get a building permit or a liquor licence. I know a few different people who’ve worked as mail carriers for Canada Post, and all of them tell near-identical stories about more senior staff instructing them on how to work slowly and take an afternoon nap in their trucks. I know people who’ve worked as custodians for the school board whose supervisors and co-workers scolded them for working too hard. Ford talked a lot about how unionized staff had to water the plants in city councillors’ offices because the politicians and their assistants wouldn’t spend a few minutes a week doing the job themselves. I suspect everyone has heard similar anecdotes—whether they are accurate or not—about public service wastefulness.
So when politicians talk about cutting the fat and finding efficiency, that’s naturally what we figure they’re talking about: making sure the workforce is actually working as hard as the rest of us, and finding innovative new ways to do things better or easier at a lower cost.
For the most part, it hasn’t turned out that way. You’ll already be familiar by now with the closing-libraries-and-eliminating-snow-plowing debates of the past two months, as well as the fire-sale Everyone Must Go! buyout packages and layoff discussions.
In short, there has been a lot of talk about cutting services, and almost no talk, until this welfare announcement, about efficiency and waste. (It was oddly telling that, in fact, the Core Service Review from KPMG that suggested services to cut was conducted before an efficiency audit that will recommend how to streamline services to save costs—almost as if eliminating services was considered a higher priority than improving them.)
The mayor and the councillors who support him have talked a lot, recently, about how Ford was elected with a mandate to cut costs and cut taxes. But it’s important to remember that the mandate was explicitly contingent on promises to improve services, not cut them. A mandate to find efficiency and eliminate waste is not the same at all as a mandate to gut services altogether.
If efficiencies cannot be found, Rob Ford owes it to those who voted for him to say, up front, “I was wrong. There is no gravy train. There’s no waste. So here are our options.”
If the mayor cannot deliver on his key promise to improve services, then at the very least we should all be entitled to a vigorous debate about service cuts and possible tax hikes before they happen.
Toronto Employment and Social Services announced that it would phase out welfare cheques and replace them with debit cards. For the roughly one-third of social services recipients (about 35,000 people) who currently are still not on the direct-deposit system—in most cases because they do not have bank accounts—this means an end to waiting by the mailbox for the life-saving envelope to arrive and, perhaps more importantly, an end to punishingly high cheque-cashing fees. Moreover, the changeover is expected to save the city between $1 million and $2.5 million per year. It’s cheaper and it provides better service to citizens. How excellent is that?
One suspects that when voters bought into Mayor Rob Ford’s waste-slashing austerity campaign during last year’s election campaign, this is the kind of thing they thought they’d see a lot. No service cuts and no layoffs, he promised—simply finding efficiencies and eliminating waste, he said, would both cut the budget enough to allow tax breaks and provide better services to residents.
All of us—or most of us, anyway—are pretty sure that government suffers from a lot of inefficiency and waste. A key part of the argument put forward by advocates of privatization is that waste is such an inherent feature of public services that it in itself justifies contracting things out to the private sector. But even many people who are ideological supporters of a strong government workforce complain about bloated bureaucracy and wasteful processes.
When we gripe about it, I suspect most of us have in mind the four-worker-one-shovel construction jobs we see every time we wander past an infrastructure project site or the reams of seemingly pointless paperwork required to get a building permit or a liquor licence. I know a few different people who’ve worked as mail carriers for Canada Post, and all of them tell near-identical stories about more senior staff instructing them on how to work slowly and take an afternoon nap in their trucks. I know people who’ve worked as custodians for the school board whose supervisors and co-workers scolded them for working too hard. Ford talked a lot about how unionized staff had to water the plants in city councillors’ offices because the politicians and their assistants wouldn’t spend a few minutes a week doing the job themselves. I suspect everyone has heard similar anecdotes—whether they are accurate or not—about public service wastefulness.
So when politicians talk about cutting the fat and finding efficiency, that’s naturally what we figure they’re talking about: making sure the workforce is actually working as hard as the rest of us, and finding innovative new ways to do things better or easier at a lower cost.
For the most part, it hasn’t turned out that way. You’ll already be familiar by now with the closing-libraries-and-eliminating-snow-plowing debates of the past two months, as well as the fire-sale Everyone Must Go! buyout packages and layoff discussions.
In short, there has been a lot of talk about cutting services, and almost no talk, until this welfare announcement, about efficiency and waste. (It was oddly telling that, in fact, the Core Service Review from KPMG that suggested services to cut was conducted before an efficiency audit that will recommend how to streamline services to save costs—almost as if eliminating services was considered a higher priority than improving them.)
The mayor and the councillors who support him have talked a lot, recently, about how Ford was elected with a mandate to cut costs and cut taxes. But it’s important to remember that the mandate was explicitly contingent on promises to improve services, not cut them. A mandate to find efficiency and eliminate waste is not the same at all as a mandate to gut services altogether.
If efficiencies cannot be found, Rob Ford owes it to those who voted for him to say, up front, “I was wrong. There is no gravy train. There’s no waste. So here are our options.”
If the mayor cannot deliver on his key promise to improve services, then at the very least we should all be entitled to a vigorous debate about service cuts and possible tax hikes before they happen.
Origin
Source: the Grid TO
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