TORONTO

After 11 years at City Hall, the man who is best considered the fiscal conscience of council is calling it quits.

In an exclusive interview last week, former budget chief Mike Del Grande told the Toronto Sun he’s decided to practise what others on council preach — but fail to do — and not run again this fall.

Del Grande certainly made a difference despite many, many obstacles he encountered along the way. And there were personal costs too -- including a heart attack in mid-2013.

“I’ve asked the (Joe) Mihevcs, the (Janet) Davises, the (Shelley) Carrolls of the world why they don’t step down to give (other) people an opportunity (and) they laugh,” Del Grande said, noting he’s open to any offers from those interested in his fiscal expertise.

“I believe in term limits. I believe once you’ve been there for a decade you either make the changes or you don’t make the changes.”

As budget chief presiding over three separate, nearly $13-billion budgets in a mere 18 months, he was not content to simply buy hook, line and sinker” into what the city staff handed him.

“I asked questions and I was inquisitive,” he said.

Del Grande’s philosophy was to get the city’s “house in order” and try to bring down the debt -- so money that would otherwise be used to service that debt could be used for new spending.

I still remember how many times he tried to pound it into councillors of all political stripes that it was essential they squirrel away surpluses, and use proceeds from any sell-off of assets, to pay for a $710-million streetcar, subway and bus bill NDP mayor David Miller conveniently left behind.

But, whenever council got down to the brass tacks of actually setting the money aside or selling off assets like Enwave, many councillors, most particularly the leftists, would whine that they needed to spend on pet projects.

Del Grande said he eventually was able to cover the $710-million bill but it was always a fight “with everybody” including his own budget committee.

Auditor-General Jeff Griffths said Del Grande was certainly a “breath of fresh air” both on audit committee and as budget chief.

“I think he did a super job on the budget process,” Griffiths said. “He understood very much the budget and it was refreshing to speak to somebody who really understood the numbers.”

To get the city’s finances under control, Del Grande said he worked 75-80 hours a week without any support.

He said the Ford brothers promised they were going to bring in retired bankers to look through the books and provide him help. That never happened.

The time he invested in trying to turn the city’s ailing fiscal ship around, and the stress of fending off all the spendaholics, cost him his health. Despite losing nearly 50 pounds and stepping away from his role as budget chief in January of 2013, Del Grande suffered a heart attack six months later.

By the time he stepped down from the budget chief role, he’d virtually had it with the lack of fiscal discipline on council and the nastiness exhibited by his council colleagues.

Last week, Del Grande said the “level of decorum (and) personality attacks” at council factored highly into his decision not to run again. In fact, there were times he was so “disgusted” with the conduct of his colleagues, he walked out of council meetings.

“It gets very nasty, very personal and I just don’t want to be part of that anymore,” he said. “I just detest that.”

He said council always behaved badly, from the time he was first elected in 2003, but the turning point came with Rob Ford’s rise to power as mayor in 2010.

“The elites were shocked that Ford got elected and they never recouped,” he said.

Del Grande does not condone Ford’s problems with booze or drugs in the slightest and believes strongly that it affected his professional life.

In fact, he concedes he feels very let down by the mayor for many reasons -- and not just because he doesn’t think before he acts.

“I know the mayor is not truthful ... that’s a given,” he said. “He believes his own lies and sometimes he loses track of his own lies.”

Nevertheless, Del Grande insists no elected official he’s known has ever received the level of “scrutiny” given to Ford -- and blasts most of the Toronto media for engaging in “cheap, gutter and lazy journalism.”

He said his experience with the City Hall press gallery is that its members rarely, if at all, do their homework with respect to budget matters and “never worked” independently.

“They all worked as a mob ... one person had information and five, six, seven of them would run behind the person who had the information,” he said. “It wasn’t independent writing ... everybody felt safe writing the same thing in the same kind of way.”

I asked Del Grande whether he ever had inkling that Ford had such extensive personal issues while he was a councillor.

“I never suspected it. He was a very good Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” he said, adding he actually enjoyed watching Rob Ford the councillor “go bonkers” with some of council’s wasteful spending.

“It was kind of refreshing to hear because he wasn’t trying to be politically correct and I thought at the time, here’s the guy who has the cojones, he’s not worried abut political correctness,” he said.

He wonders to this day how Rob Ford hasn’t had a heart attack with so much pressure on him.

“The amount of scrutiny, the amount of harassment has just been tremendous,” Del Grande said. “I would have broken a long, long time ago.”

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MIKE DEL GRANDE TELLS IT LIKE IT IS:

* ON THE MEDIA COVERING CITY HALL: “I think the level of professional journalism isn’t professional anymore ... it’s cheap journalism, it’s gutter journalism, it’s lazy journalism.”

* ON ROB FORD AS A MAYOR: “The only thing Rob did well was that he surrounded himself with good people ... then it backfired on him. In terms of direction, thinking things through ... he doesn’t have the capacity.”

*ON WHETHER ROB FORD THE COUNCILLOR MANIFESTED DRUG OR DRINKING PROBLEMS: “There were no signs when he was councillor ... he was a very good Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

* ON THE DOWNTOWN VS. SUBURBAN DIVIDE: “We do have two cities in Toronto ... the old city of Toronto it’s a socialistic mindset ... the rest of Toronto it’s the have-nots.”

* ON THE INABILITY OF POLITICIANS TO REIN IN SPENDING: “The problem with government is when they make mistakes, all they say is ‘I’m sorry’ and here’s a new tax or here’s an increase in tax I have to impose to pay for my mistakes ... that’s why Rob Ford resonates because people are tired of all that B.S.”