Article content continued

This solved the serious problem city council used to have with committees of councillors who cared very much about, say, transit, deciding that transit was underfunded and voting to spend more on transit. The final council meeting on the budget, where all this had to be thrashed out, always ended up in (1) blood on the floor, as all the committees’ debates got re-debated, and (2) a higher tax increase than anybody expected.

But the solution created two new problems.

There’s no mechanism for councillors to change the priorities Watson sets. No way to say that better transit is more important than repaving roads, or a new police station is more important than a new library. Those are in different parts of the budget, on opposite sides of unbreachable walls, and those walls are in some arbitrary places.

Where’s the money for busways and park-and-rides and studies for transit projects? Not in the transit budget, but the transportation budget. The transit commission handles OC Transpo’s operations, the transportation committee handles construction.

But not all construction. Where do we keep the light-rail money? That’s in the finance committee budget, along with the IT department and HR, so the mayor can oversee it through the one committee he chairs.

Is all the transportation spending in the transportation budget? No! Some of it’s in the agriculture-and-rural affairs budget, along with some of the urban-planning budget, for roads in rural Ottawa.