What sniveling toadies we have masquerading as transit commissioners.

Denzil Minnan-Wong. Cesar Palacio. Norm Kelly. Frank Di Giorgio. Vincent Crisanti. Remember their names for induction in the transit hall of shame.

The querulous quintet — censorious and calculating city councillors — have called a special meeting of the Toronto Transit Commission on Tuesday to knife the chief general manager, Gary Webster.

For more than a year, Mayor Rob Ford has schemed to get Webster out of the way. Webster’s sin? He spoke truth to power. He told Ford he could not support the mayor’s subway plan because it did not make sense any more.

That, apparently, is a firing offence at city hall — a system of government where the civil service is supposed to be independent.

At city council last week, councillors asked Webster his views on subway versus LRT. Calmly, professionally, hesitantly, Webster gave them his internationally renowned professional opinion. For that, Ford has not forgiven him — despite Webster’s 35 years’ experience at the TTC.

When Ford got elected he cancelled Transit City, summoned Webster to his office. Webster promised to outline the TTC’s current position on LRTs versus subways. A staff report was prepared, but Ford stopped its circulation. Instead, he wanted Stintz to engineer Webster’s dismissal. And he demanded Stintz not circulate the report.

Stintz kept the report quiet, but refused to do Ford’s dirty deed. Webster’s views actually made sense, she thought, and were certainly not a firing offence.

For that, Stintz herself ended up on Ford’s hit list. But a new city council bylaw takes the political future of the chair of the TTC out of the mayor’s hands. Only city council can remove Stintz as chair, and the majority of council supports her.

Webster is not insulated in this way. All it takes is a majority vote of the nine-person commission and he is history. As five commissioners have signed the request for a special TTC meeting, it is safe to think they have agreed to fire Webster.

There is no need to cry for Webster. He can leave with his head high, his integrity intact — and a huge severance of between $400,000 and $500,000. But you should cry for the city hall bureaucracy, the men and women who are supposed to be above politics and offer council unvarnished, unfettered and uninfected advice on city matters.

All pretense of this is now shattered.

The final straw was no doubt the Star story on Wednesday. It quoted from a TTC report, dated a year ago, which informed the Ford administration that a subway extension along Sheppard is no longer viable.

Ridership along Sheppard is less than a third of projections. Job growth at the North York and Scarborough terminuses are abysmal. Projections had called for 93,400 jobs in North York centre and 65,000 in Scarborough Centre by 2006. In fact, the combined total for both centres is fewer than 44,000.

Instead of sharing that information with city council, Ford buried the document and demanded it not be circulated. Worse, he continued selling the virtues of the Sheppard corridor, trumpeting the number of jobs and riders and development it would generate — knowing the numbers were bogus.

Now, he is embarrassed and angry that it became public and, so, someone must pay. If Stintz won’t do the job, his other allies on the commission must twist the bloody knife.

The message sent to the city bureaucracy is, tell the politicians what they want to hear — or you are history, even if you have had decades of terrific service.

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“Mr. Webster is the pure embodiment of professionalism,” says transit commissioner Maria Augimeri, who won’t support the firing. “There is no one more truthful, with more integrity and more knowledge.”

The Fanatical Five — governed by a fatal fealty to the mayor — may want to reconsider this vendetta over the Family Day long weekend.

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca