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More recently, councillors were greeted with the news that maintenance payments to Rideau Transit Maintenance (RTM) were not what they had understood. The accusations and calls for a scapegoat escalated. The city’s transit boss apologized and said there had been no intent to deceive.

Photo by Tony Caldwell / Postmedia

In a broad sense, everyone involved in the management of public dollars is accountable to the public, but no single person has the answer to every question. Firing people does not lead to greater accountability: asking the right questions of the right people does.

As councillors, we (yes, me included) lack a clear understanding of our role and responsibilities for transit operations and our impact on the strategic direction of OC Transpo. There is a growing cynicism towards public transit at a time when we need support and patience from residents. Approaching accountability only by telling our transit managers what they are doing wrong is abdicating our governance role and fails to provide the direction and guidance that our terms of reference hold us to.

Our oversight role as transit commissioners is to clarify and explain the preferences of the community to our transit experts.

As elected officials, we do not come to city council with subject matter expertise on transit or any other area of municipal operations. We receive a broad mandate to represent our communities on the basis of our ability to communicate a vision that voters support. Once we take office, our job is to communicate the values of the community to the experts who are employed by the city. In other words, we tell them what we want and they tell us how they are going to do it. The ongoing dialogue between values (what we want) and expertise (how we get it) shapes city services and operations. These values have to be clear or else we’ll never get the transit system we are looking for.