With one exception — a big one — we favour expanding Ontario ombudsman André Marin’s oversight to include municipalities, school boards and universities.

Politicians and bureaucrats working in these sectors have long operated free of independent scrutiny. Inexcusable excesses have resulted, usually at taxpayers’ expense, especially at the civic level.

Scandals abound. The Toronto District School Board, alone, offers a wealth of examples, such as spending $2,900 for an electrical outlet on a library wall. Sudbury generously provides each of its city councillors a $50,000-a-year slush fund to be distributed as they wish. And, of course, police are investigating the widespread flouting of spending rules in Brampton.

In that city, formal approval of expense accounts was rolled back “in favour of the honour system,” Marin told the Star’s editorial board this past week. “That worked out well,” he added, with a sarcastic tone.

Even more worrisome than the abuses we know about now is what else may lie below the surface. Simply put, in the absence of permanent, credible oversight the public has no reliable way of gauging the extent of possible rot at the civic level.

To close this accountability gap, the province is expanding the jurisdiction of Marin’s office to cover all 444 of Ontario’s municipalities. It’s part of legislation re-introduced by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government in July.

Once Bill 8 is passed, people in towns from Kenora to Kingston will be free to file a formal complaint to the Ontario ombudsman if they see wrongdoing or feel mistreated by their municipality. On the whole, that’s a good thing.

When the legislation was first announced, Marin noted it would correct a situation that has left “millions of citizens with nowhere to complain about the public bodies that touched their lives most closely.”

But there’s a problem: Bill 8 goes too far.

It needlessly covers millions of citizens, specifically in Toronto, who already have an effective ombudsman fielding complaints.

Under the new legislation Marin’s jurisdiction would extend to encompass Toronto ombudsman Fiona Crean — so he’d be an ombudsman overseeing the work of another ombudsman.

Marin argues that he’ll leave Crean free to pursue picayune local complaints while he handles big investigations into “systemic” civic problems. But Crean has done an exemplary job on both fronts, recently exposing systemic failures at the Toronto Community Housing Corp. that resulted in the well-deserved firing of CEO Gene Jones.

Marin’s intrusion sets the scene for turf wars, jurisdictional confusion and bureaucratic delay. Jones may have kept his job for months longer had Mayor Rob Ford, seeking a fresh investigation, complained to Marin’s office about Crean’s in-depth report. Indeed, Ford almost certainly would have done that.

Marin expressed confidence that he would have no problem effectively overseeing this city’s ombudsman’s office, just as he handles various provincial bodies. “Toronto’s not that special,” he concluded,

But he’s wrong. This city, alone in Ontario, has extraordinary autonomy through its own legislation: the City of Toronto Act. The act requires Toronto to have an ombudsman — that’s why only this municipality employs one. And this office should not be superseded.

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While Bill 8 brings welcome and necessary accountability to the rest of the province, it risks clouding and even undermining this worthwhile objective in Toronto. Queen’s Park has been reluctant to exempt this city because smaller communities may seek to escape supervision simply by hiring their own ombudsman. But that concern is readily answered.

The correct next step is to amend Bill 8 so that it exempts, from Marin’s purview, any municipality that has an ombudsman as well as special rights and powers enshrined in its own, unique legislation. As Canada’s biggest city and sixth largest government, Toronto is not like any other place in Ontario. It is special. And it would be a capital mistake to ignore that.