Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government is going out of its way to signal it won’t stand in the way of Toronto’s new mayor and his aggressively conservative agenda.

Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne called local reporters Saturday, four days before Rob Ford takes office.

She said she wants to let Ford, his new council and Torontonians know that her government can quickly make technical changes to accommodate the cancellation of Toronto’s $60 vehicle registration tax.

Ford has said scrapping the unpopular tax, imposed by the Mayor David Miller regime and collected by the provincial government, will be his first order of business.

“If the city wants the tax revoked as of Jan. 1, we would be in a position to make the IT changes to do that,” Wynne said.

Asked if she was sending Ford a message by calling reporters on a weekend with what is essentially a housekeeping item, Wynne said: “With a change of administration at the city, I think it’s important that we get off to a good start.

“We have had a really good working relationship with City Hall for the past seven years and we want that to continue.”

That Wynne was chosen to send the message may be a message in itself. She was particularly outspoken among provincial Liberals in endorsing her former cabinet colleague George Smitherman for the Toronto mayor’s job.

“I believe George will be a fine mayor — he has the heart, the experience and the energy to represent us well at City Hall and beyond,” she wrote to her constituents during the campaign, while Ford “is intent on practising the politics of division and anger.”

Ford and his brother Doug, the councillor-elect for Ward 2, are strong supporters of the Ontario PCs.

At Queen’s Park this week, the Liberals, who trail Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak in public-opinion polls with an election set for next Oct. 6, said they are eager to work with Toronto’s incoming mayor.

Ford won a huge mandate Oct. 25 in a city where the governing party holds 19 of 23 seats, so McGuinty does not want to do anything to upset the new mayor’s political honeymoon.

Sources say talks between the two administrations over the past few weeks have been civil and fruitful, with the Liberals expressing a willingness to be flexible on issues like transit.

Wynne said she had an informal meeting last week with Councillor Karen Stintz, Ford’s pick for TTC chair, that did not delve deeply into Ford’s pledge to expand Toronto’s subway system, and scrap the provincially funded Transit City plan to snake light-rail lines into the inner suburbs.

Privately, some senior cabinet ministers are delighted that Ford campaigned on City Hall having “a spending problem, not a revenue problem” because it suggests he will not be coming cap-in-hand for bailouts like his predecessors. With an $18.7 billion provincial deficit for 2010-11, that would be a welcome change for Queen’s Park.

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If Ford makes good on vows to scrap the vehicle-registration tax in 2011 and, in 2012, the land-transfer fee, officials say they have a response ready should he approach Queen’s Park for more cash.

One senior Liberal said: “We’ll just tell him: ‘Haven’t you heard, the gravy train has been stopped.’”

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