Beware the bureaucrats pitching ideas to improve efficiency and save time and money.
Embedded within their suggestions, which look so smart and thoughtful on the surface, is more power for them and less oversight of their work by their political masters.
City council unanimously gave preliminary approval Monday to new policy that would allow city staff to make all purchases without further approval, as long as those purchases are in line with the overall financial plan set by the mayor and councillors of the day. Under the current policy, city council must sign off on all purchases above $1 million.
Walter Babicz, the city's general manager of administrative services, made the pitch, stressing that purchases would happen faster, three quotes would still be required for major buys and vendors would stop lobbying the mayor and city council for contracts.
"And frankly, I'm not sure how fair it is to bring a matter to council for approval in this manner when council wasn't on the evaluation team and doesn't have all the detailed information that the evaluation team had when scoring the proposal," he added.
Council will still get a purchase update four times a year under the new policy.
It's a thoughtful, well-designed plan that lets city employees do their jobs and pushes mayor and council out of the way, which is exactly why the brakes need to be tapped firmly on this proposal.
For starters, Babicz brings up some worrisome points.
Vendors lobbying the mayor and council is difficult because it takes five votes to win approval, meaning it's difficult to tilt the playing field.
Under the new system, vendors would only have to lobby one or two people - the director and the city manager - to grease the wheels.
To say that the politics can be taken out of these decisions is ridiculous, so maybe they should be left with the politicians, the only individuals in the process who are actually directly accountable to voters.
It's also a bit of an insult from the bureaucracy to insinuate that the mayor and council can't process all of that "detailed information" brought to them for approval.
With all due respect, this is the public governance of a small city, not the management of federal public infrastructure or even the coordination of the moon landing.
Those are nine competent men and women sitting in those chairs in council chambers. They're also smart enough to ask questions when they don't fully understand what's before them.
While mayor and council have to trust in their city manager to oversee the municipal bureaucracy, that confidence must have limits.
Trust and confidence in this scenario, and in all professional relationships, should be based on the ability to competently carry out duties and responsibilities, not on who's easy to work with or good or nice.
With that in mind, the relationships between mayor, council, the city manager and directors are better to appreciate when keeping names and personalities right out of it.
The names change over time, so it shouldn't matter who is sitting in the chairs.
The job and the process are what matters, not whether Mayor Lyn Hall trusts city manager Kathleen Soltis and her team to make significant purchases with less oversight.
Fortunately, there is an easy compromise available to give the senior city staff the flexibility to move quickly on purchases while giving city council and local residents the confidence that there remains transparency and oversight.
While the eight city councillors are part-time employees without offices in city hall, the major is a full-time employee with an office. Those spending decisions should cross the mayor's desk for final approval.
The mayor would then report to the rest of city council, preferably monthly, on the purchases made.
It would be rare - if ever - that a city staff decision would be overturned, but that's not the point of the exercise.
Oversight and transparency are the foundations of trust in government. Corruption and eroding faith in civic institutions occurs when those elements are removed, as has been seen across Quebec with the ongoing revelations of buyouts handed out for construction and building projects.
Lastly, top bureaucrats having to take the extra time to explain their complicated decisions to their political masters is a reality check and a daily reminder who's really in charge.
There's nothing wrong with improving the city's purchasing policy but the last signature should be the mayor's, not the city manager's.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
