John Lorinc, writing for the Globe, gets an interview with new TTC Chair Karen Stintz and midway through she drops this bomb:

In any case, her fingerprints won’t be on the final deal. The mayor’s office has left her out of the high-stakes negotiations with Metrolinx and the province over Mr. Ford’s subway plan. Ms. Stintz gamely insists the talks “are taking place at the right level” and denies that she’s trapped between the competing political agendas of the mayor and Premier Dalton McGuinty.

via Karen Stintz, new TTC chair – The Globe and Mail.

She also restates her support for the Eglinton line, but seems resigned to having no real influence as to whether it happens or not.

It’s mind-bending to me that the mayor’s office has left the TTC chair out of all major transit decisions. If Stintz isn’t involved, and Ford self-admittedly doesn’t know much about the TTC, who the hell is leading the charge in the Metrolinx negotiations?

As a postscript, as the news unfurls over the next few weeks and Stintz spins whatever new plan we end up getting as the right thing for this city, keep this quote in mind. It’s from just this past April in an article by (yet again) John Lorinc:

Stintz says she supports the Metrolinx “Big Move” plan, which includes the LRT network. “We came together,” she told me on Friday, “because it’s not a partisan issue, it’s a city building issue.”

I understand adapting to the winds of political change, but some consistency sure would be nice.

Tags: karen stintz, transit, transit city, ttc