A change in the way Queen’s Park funds Toronto is generating predictable outrage from Mayor Rob Ford’s administration. The prospect of this city being shortchanged by almost $150 million over the next few years is being painted in dire tones.

“This money will have to come from cuts to vital programs,” Ford warned on Friday. He wants an urgent meeting with Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa — but Ford doesn’t have much to complain about given that, even with this reduction, Toronto is set to receive more from the province than it does now.

That’s emphasized in a five-page letter from Sousa in which he tells the city that a special fund, which pumps $149.3 million into Toronto’s coffers this year, will be phased out by 2016. Despite that, the city will see a $110-million increase in Queen’s Park’s contributions to its operating budget by 2016. Ford says he will demand restoration of the special fund when he meets with Sousa on Monday. But, sadly, the mayor’s case is weak.

First, there are reasonable grounds to trim the special payment. It’s called the Toronto Pooling Compensation fund and its roots go back to when the government of former premier Mike Harris unfairly stuck this city with huge social program costs.

Even Harris recognized that Canada’s largest city acts as a magnet for the poor, the homeless, the disabled and the disaffected from surrounding regions. His government, in fairness, required municipal taxpayers in areas around Toronto to share this burden by pooling contributions into a fund used to mitigate Toronto’s social costs.

For years this subsidy was a source of bitter complaint in other cities across the Greater Toronto Area. People were understandably resentful of Toronto’s clout and the relatively low property taxes paid by big-city residents. Former premier Dalton McGuinty eventually responded by liberating GTA municipalities from this cost. They made their final payments in 2012 with the province assuming the burden of compensating Toronto. The flow of this money is now drying up. But that’s fair, and Sousa explains why.

Another of McGuinty’s major initiatives was to gradually lift the massive social costs Harris had imposed on Toronto. This “uploading” of welfare, disability support benefits, administration costs and other expenses saved Toronto more than $360 million this year. And it’s projected to save almost $500 million by 2016.

Sousa uses his letter to point out that, with this removal of old social burdens, there’s waning justification for provincial taxpayers to maintain the Toronto Pooling Compensation fund. But never mind. The Ford administration is howling nonetheless.

Unfortunately for the mayor’s case, he has very little leverage at Queen’s Park. What will Ford do on meeting Sousa — exert pressure by threatening to use his clout to push for the defeat of Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal government? He and his equally intemperate brother, Councillor Doug Ford, already and repeatedly do that on their ill-advised radio show. Now Ford has to go to the same government he routinely attacks and plead for money.

What would he use it for? Ford has openly declared his budget goal next year is a 10 per cent cut in the city’s land transfer tax. That would cost about $34 million. No wonder Ford needs restoration of the $50 million in pooling compensation money that the province plans to erase in 2014.

He wants Ontario taxpayers, already saddled with a massive deficit, to keep paying into a fund of dwindling necessity so he can use the money to score election year political points by cutting Torontonians’ taxes. Along the way, Ford is sure to brag about his so-called fiscal discipline, as he did again Friday, while hammering Wynne and the Liberals for their profligacy.

In light of all this, we can excuse Sousa if, on listening to Ford, he does nothing more than politely show this bumbling mayor the door.