The Senate isn’t the only unelected, unaccountable body that likes to second-guess our democratically elected representatives.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Ontario Municipal Board? The OMB may lack the high profile of the Senate, and its appointees don’t make headlines for bogus expense claims.

But the OMB’s legacy of meddling makes it no less notorious. After decades of overruling city councils across the province to side with powerful developers, it has a reputation for favouring special interests over the public interest.

Now the OMB is itself getting a second look. A creature of Queen’s Park, it has just picked a fight with the province that it probably can’t win.

Last week, after months of public musings, the Liberal government announced a review of OMB operations. It will seek public feedback and try to streamline the way this quasi-judicial body — unique in North America — overrules city halls and overreaches into provincial governance.

Like the Senate, the OMB dates from the 19th century, when it minded the railways and municipal finances. Up until the 1990s, its members also enjoyed lifetime appointments.

It weighs in on everything from fence disputes between neighbours to zoning debates over high-rise condos. But all these years later, Ontario’s big cities say they are mature entities that don’t require adult supervision.

In a closely watched move, Waterloo Region is taking the OMB to court over a bizarre ruling that granted developers access to more than 1,000 hectares of prime farmland. Waterloo’s official plan had restricted future development to 85 hectares of urban lands designated for intensification — in line with the provincial Places to Grow Act — but land-hungry developers appealed to the OMB and won.

Hence the pushback from city hall, and the call for public feedback out of Queen’s Park. In a rare move, the government has also joined Waterloo’s formal court challenge against the OMB.

The Waterloo appeal matters because the region had painstakingly aligned its official plan with the Places to Grow Act. If the OMB can effectively trash the provincial government’s long-term vision for population growth, it would set a disturbing precedent for the entire Golden Horseshoe area.

As a former minister of municipal affairs, Kathleen Wynne got the ball rolling on a review. Now as premier, she also holds the agriculture portfolio, which makes her directly responsible for the Places to Grow Act. With an election looming within the next year, municipalities will judge her actions after a decade of Liberal promises to make the OMB work.

“I was working on preparing some recommendations as to how we might change the OMB,” Wynne said pointedly after the surprise Waterloo verdict. “It’s probably time for a discussion about whether there needs to be further changes.”

Procedural reforms in 2006 were supposed to remake the meddlesome OMB into a more circumspect and constrained appeals body. But these turned out to be mere tweaks, and frustrated opposition parties have more recently introduced bills to curb the OMB’s power.

A Tory proposal would exempt cities from OMB appeals on intensification, while the NDP bill would exempt Toronto outright. Toronto city hall voted to seek a full exemption from Queen’s Park last year, after rejecting a previous offer that didn’t go far enough. All that manoeuvring puts the Liberals on the spot.

Critics argue that the OMB too often serves as a surrogate planning board, allowing developers with deep pockets to do an end-run around Toronto’s planning department. That’s anti-democratic.

Despite its unpopularity, few believe the OMB can merely be wished away. If it didn’t exist, we would have to reinvent it. Without an effective appeals process, city councillors could reflexively side with local residents or anti-intensification NIMBYism. Someone has to play the role of impartial referee, lest everyone end up in even more costly courtroom battles.

For big cities such as Toronto, it seems only fair to allow for a locally-run, arms’ length appeals mechanism to guard against errors of law or lapses in due process. It rankles when non-Toronto appointees to the OMB issue edicts without explanation, undermining years of negotiations and planning work.

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Substituting the often arbitrary judgment of outside OMB appointees for on-the-ground assessments by local councillors leaves us all going in circles. As the Wynne government tries to square that circle, it should let Toronto lead the way. And find a better way for the rest of the province.

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