Premier Doug Ford was right to demand fiscal accountability from Ontario’s municipalities and he was right on Monday to postpone provincial spending cuts for this year.

To be fair, we’ve criticized Ford for not cutting spending quickly enough going forward.

But cutting municipal budgets retroactively put Toronto Mayor John Tory and other mayors in the unfair position of having to blow up their 2019 budgets that had already been approved, exacerbated by the fact municipalities can’t run deficits.

One reason for Ford’s reversal was that the Progressive Conservatives’ poll numbers were tanking in the face of the successful campaign against the cuts led in Toronto by Tory and public health board chair Joe Cressy.

But by backing down, Ford has also demonstrated he’s willing to compromise, as he did on his initial plan to reduce funding for French-language education.

Unlike former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne who, for example, rammed through a $2 billion annual carbon tax by another name on Ontarians following the 2014 election, despite never having mentioned it during the campaign.

We hope Ford’s learned that acting like a bull in a china shop in cutting spending, without a clear explanation about what he’s doing and why, is a bad idea.

For example, why did the Ford government wait until April 25 to announce it was earmarking $1.6 billion to school boards so they would not be forced to lay off teachers to achieve increased class sizes the government announced March 15?

That resulted in weeks of fear-mongering by teacher unions and school trustees that Ford was about to lay off thousands of teachers against their will, contrary to his election promise layoffs would be done by voluntary resignations and retirements.

Had the $1.6 billion been announced at the same time as the increased class sizes, the entire uproar could have been avoided.

With Ford backing down from municipal funding cuts this year, it’s up to Tory and other mayors to prove, as they’ve said, that they’re willing to help the province reduce spending and balance Ontario’s budget.

We’ll soon know if that’s true, or if they’ll revert to the same end-of-the world rhetoric next year, in a bid to avoid any funding restraint by the province.