No. It’s a simple answer. No.

The premier still does not favour giving Calgary and Edmonton the right to hit citizens with new city taxes.

“We don’t want taxpayers to pay more taxes,” says Redford.

“We’re not interested in having taxpayers pay more taxes,” she says, at another spot in the year-end face-to-face. And again.

“We’re satisfied with the way things are.”

But talk turns to new big city taxing powers after Redford shuffles tough-guy Doug Griffiths out as the province’s point man on dealing with the cities and puts in Ken Hughes who is not expected to ruffle any political plumage.

The question is a natural one.

New city taxes floated, at least in Calgary, include a few cents a litre tax at the gas pump, a vehicle registration tax, a property transfer tax, a property insurance tax, a 1% city sales tax and on it goes.

Sounds like Redford has not opened a new songbook.

While she says new taxing powers for cities are not on her wish list, the premier adds if the big cities want that authority they would likely not score the bucks they now get for building projects in a program called MSI.

This year it was $254 million for Calgary and $170 million for Edmonton.

“If we change that system and municipalities say they want to have more taxing powers then, as our previous municipal affairs minister has said and as this minister has said, there is one taxpayer,” says Redford.

“If you have a municipal government that says: Look, we want more taxing powers, from our perspective as the provincial government, as custodians of taxpayers’ dollars, we’re going to say you’re probably not going to get MSI.”

“We’re not going to say: OK cities, you can go and have taxing powers and we’re not going to change anything, we’ll keep giving you MSI. It’s not a matter of saying if you want more taxes at the municipal level you’re going to continue to be able to get provincial funding for infrastructure.”

Ouch.

Redford says she watched October’s city elections and candidates for mayor weren’t talking a whole lot about more taxing powers for big cities.

She says it would be “very difficult for municipal leaders to come out and say: Well, you know we have a mandate to do this.”

“They may feel confident about negotiating on it and, if they do want to do that, then we’re prepared to talk about it.”

Uh-oh. Back up, premier. Does that mean it can be written you actually are open to taxing powers?

“That wouldn’t be right,” says Redford, referring back to new city taxes and the big city mayors, Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi and Edmonton’s Don Iveson.

“I know they want to raise those and if they want to talk about those anybody can bring anything they want to the table.”

But Redford adds the province is “pretty uncomfortable with that” especially when cities haven’t even talked to the people in those cities about it.

She says they need to be “straightforward” with taxpayers.

The premier expects great back-and-forth with Nenshi and Iveson calling them “thoughtful” and saying “they’re trying to find new ways of doing things.”

“I think there might be some areas where they will challenge our thinking on how to do things. I don’t know what those options are but we’ll see.”

Redford offers up a cautionary tale even when speaking of a possible sharing of dollars coming into the provincial government coffers.

“I’m a little worried,” she says.

“At the end of the day we want to be accountable to Albertans for the taxes collected. We don’t want a situation where we’re collecting the taxes and then they’re being spent in a way where we can’t be accountable.”

Of course, in recent days, Nenshi laments the lack of headway on “fundamental tax reform.”

“Something needs to happen at some point,” he says.

The mayor goes after people he says will jump up and down and say he is greedy and wants new taxes.

“As politicians we have to ignore those fringe elements and focus on what’s right for the community.”

In some dreamland never to exist, we’d see new taxing powers put to a city-wide vote.

But Nenshi doesn’t have the guts to go there just like he didn’t have the intestines to put the $52-million tax break on the city ballot. He isn’t stupid. He knew the outcome.

Fringe elements indeed.

rick.bell@sunmedia.ca

On Twitter: @sunrickbell