Economic Opportunity Commission Needed Broader Input
Jun 29, 2007
Upon his reelection in 2006, Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz reiterated his desire to eliminate the City of Winnipeg’s business tax. Get ready for less services and paying more for the services we do get from the City of Winnipeg.
The business tax rate itself has been reduced relatively recently, but the Mayor remains committed to finding ways of getting rid of it (and the $56 million in annual revenues that it brings in) as quickly as possible. To that end, he recruited rookie Councillor Scott Fielding and a select group of pro-business people to sit on the “Economic Opportunity Commission.” Its mandate would be to find ways to cut spending and raise revenues to the tune of this $56 million if and when the business tax is eliminated.
Improving Our City’s Competitiveness: Final Report of the Economic Opportunity Commission has now been released. Not surprisingly, it makes some rather bold recommendations: selling off the City’s golf courses, giving up control of recreation centres, tying City wages to inflation and establishing a snitch line for suspected cases of fraud.
One of the most disconcerting things about the makeup of the Commission is that it is populated exclusively with those who share a single view: taxes are too high and need to be reduced, City workers are overpaid, and many services the City delivers currently can and should be delivered by the private sector. There are two representatives of ideological special interest groups on this body: Adrian Batra of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and Shannon Martin of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Both make a living telling government to cut taxes. What did the Mayor expect these individuals to recommend? It wouldn’t have been difficult to predict what the recommendations would be before the group had even released them.
The report was completed in less than six months and for a sum of approximately $45,000. But shouldn’t a process as important as this – with potentially severe ramifications for City staff and the citizens who use the services in question – have been a much more serious undertaking? Shouldn’t we have had a broad range of community input?
Mayor Katz is already on record as stating that some of the recommended measures have been dismissed and that he was going to spend some time cherry picking ones that he is willing and able to support. Which makes this seem much more like a shopping list of things he and his Commission would like to see happen regardless if they’re connected to the elimination of the business tax.
Make no mistake – this is not an economic strategy for Winnipeg. It’s a desperate effort to find “efficiencies” so that the Mayor can eliminate the business tax. Would it not have been better to have a commission that looked at Winnipeg’s various forms of taxes and made recommendations on how we can make the overall taxation system a better one? One would think so. And it would have been a good idea to include a broader cross section on the committee to ensure all voices were heard in this process – not merely the voices that tell Winnipeg’s Mayor want he wants to hear.
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Less services ?? They have crappy service now !!!
jimcotton - 2007-06-29 20:19