Media
Municipalities: Revert or Rebuild?
The Policy ShopOnline
URL: https://thepolicyshop.ca/articles/revertorrebuild
Normal. After health and safety concerns, the most common crisis impulse is to get back to ‘the way it was.’ Including professionally.
Let’s distinguish, however between reverting to the status quo after a break like the one we’re experiencing, and continuing to do something the way it’s always been done under ‘business as usual’ circumstances.
For staff eager to get back to operating as they did pre-COVID-19, we have a request: Acknowledge the choice in either to resume or review.
For people looking to go beyond patching the gaps in policy and procedure exposed by the disruption and re-consider some of the fundamentals whose logic produced the gaps, we have a request for you too: Keep reading.
Regulators Gone Wild
The Policy Shop, July 21, 2022Online
URL: https://thepolicyshop.ca/articles/350papercuts
For those that think municipalities’ main financial accountability should be to the people who pay for municipal services, the absorption of administrative capacity to report on provincial programs is alarming.
Here’s how the 350 provincially required reports per year break down by requisitioning Ministry and program.
Come Clean: Taking a look at how far the provincial hand is in the municipal pocket
Changing Authority to Generate Revenue
by Emily Harris
Published by The Policy Shop
January 17, 2022
Looking at the extent of Ontario municipalities' revenue raising power separate from actual municipal use of it is needed to understand the influence of non-municipal actors on local revenue capacity. How much flex is built into the sources municipalities can tap? Is there any indication that enabling robust local financial planning capacity was part of rule makers’ intent for enacting amendments - either incrementally or cumulatively? The article finds that municipalities' capacity to generate revenue has decreased over 30 years; there is no indication the provincially set municipal revenue framework was built to withstand emergencies, making crises such as the one we're experiencing increasingly likely, predictable and, to some extent, by design.
URL: https://thepolicyshop.ca/articles/politicallegislativeinfluencesrevenue
Biography
Emily Harris has worked in municipal finance policy at several universities, as a Financial Analyst in the City of Toronto’s budget division, as a Management and Policy Consultant in the Toronto City Manager’s Office, as the Manager of Policy at the Municipal Finance Officers’ Association (MFOA), and as a private consultant to public and professional bodies; most recently through The Policy Shop. As Director, she has completed projects for many municipal governments and municipal associations on asset management, budgeting, own source revenue mobilization and diversification.
Harris is frequently invited to speak about opportunities to strengthen financial governance in Canadian municipalities. She is affiliated with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and holds a Master of Arts in Political Economy.