How the TTC chair went from being one of David Miller's leading adversaries to the most vocal proponent of his Transit City legacy.
Back then, she was known as “the unofficial leader of the opposition” and was considered a leading candidate to run against Miller for mayor. This week, when she led a revolt to torpedo Rob Ford’s transit plan, Stintz once again became the unofficial leader of the opposition, at least for the time being.
Stintz’s career has been both fascinating and frustrating to watch since she arrived at City Hall in 2003. A civil servant with master’s degrees in journalism and public administration, she answered an ad in the paper placed by a group of Ward 16 residents looking to unseat a long-serving councillor.
Since that incumbent, Anne Johnston, was David Miller’s mentor, Stintz’s victory put her on the wrong side of the new mayor immediately. Though she told me in 2010 that she’d never wanted to be an opponent of Miller’s, their apparently mutual antagonism persisted through his two terms.
As a youthful, energetic and intelligent conservative on council, she attracted favourable attention and high hopes from those who thought Miller was a shade too pink. Her opposition didn’t do much to slow Miller’s progress, but Stintz was still picked by many as the councillor most likely to mount a successful run for mayor.
After she decided not to run, she stayed resolutely neutral in the mayoral election. She told me then that she was ready and willing to work with whichever candidate was elected. I got the sense that having lived through two terms as an outsider, she wanted onto the governing team, no matter who led it.
When Ford appointed her TTC chair last year, she got her wish. And for more than a year, she has been a loyal team player, voting with the mayor more than 90 per cent of the time, even when he publicly undermined her.
Meanwhile, it has been the consensus of virtually everyone you could call a transit expert that Ford’s plan to bury the entire Eglinton LRT line was a tremendous waste of money, and far inferior to the previous plan—Miller’s legacy project, Transit City. Presumably Stintz, as the chair of the TTC, has realized just how much more transit we’d get for our dollars under the old plan (which she always supported despite her general opposition to Miller).
And as the mayor has grown less popular and lost control of council, a groundswell of voters and councillors has arisen to try to revert to the original transit plan. Again, Stintz tried to be a team player, first offering Ford a face-saving compromise that would have preserved his Sheppard subway plan (his highest priority) while reverting to many of the better elements of the old plan. But Ford very publicly rejected this sensible compromise.
So here we are, and Stintz is in opposition again. This week, she lined up 23 other councillors—a majority of council—to call a special meeting today, over the mayor’s objections. The agenda: scrap the mayor’s plan, forget the compromise and revert to Miller’s plan. (Follow @TheGridTO for my and my colleague David Topping’s Tweets from the meeting.)
After years of under-delivering on her political promise, Stintz is attempting to take charge of Canada’s largest infrastructure project and lead council on its implementation. Given the antipathy of leftists and some centrists to the mayor, and given Stintz’s own centre-right credibility, she seems to be the person best positioned to lead a council consensus on this and other issues where the mayor has shown he’s completely unwilling to entertain debate or compromise. Once again, you have people talking about a possible mayoral run in Stintz’s future.
The Ford team, for its part, has begun a campaign of attacks on Stintz, saying she’s leading a “coup” and branding her a union stooge and a patsy for the residual Miller bench on council. It is entirely possible, especially if public opinion on the mayor turns favourable, that Stintz will wind up paying a very heavy political price for her dramatic break with Team Ford. But it also appears equally possible, for the first time in her career, that she could become one of the most influential members of the city’s elected government.
Stintz has always desperately wanted to help run things. Strangely, it now appears that in returning to her familiar role in opposition, she is finally getting her chance to lead.
Stintz’s career has been both fascinating and frustrating to watch since she arrived at City Hall in 2003. A civil servant with master’s degrees in journalism and public administration, she answered an ad in the paper placed by a group of Ward 16 residents looking to unseat a long-serving councillor.
Since that incumbent, Anne Johnston, was David Miller’s mentor, Stintz’s victory put her on the wrong side of the new mayor immediately. Though she told me in 2010 that she’d never wanted to be an opponent of Miller’s, their apparently mutual antagonism persisted through his two terms.
As a youthful, energetic and intelligent conservative on council, she attracted favourable attention and high hopes from those who thought Miller was a shade too pink. Her opposition didn’t do much to slow Miller’s progress, but Stintz was still picked by many as the councillor most likely to mount a successful run for mayor.
After she decided not to run, she stayed resolutely neutral in the mayoral election. She told me then that she was ready and willing to work with whichever candidate was elected. I got the sense that having lived through two terms as an outsider, she wanted onto the governing team, no matter who led it.
When Ford appointed her TTC chair last year, she got her wish. And for more than a year, she has been a loyal team player, voting with the mayor more than 90 per cent of the time, even when he publicly undermined her.
Meanwhile, it has been the consensus of virtually everyone you could call a transit expert that Ford’s plan to bury the entire Eglinton LRT line was a tremendous waste of money, and far inferior to the previous plan—Miller’s legacy project, Transit City. Presumably Stintz, as the chair of the TTC, has realized just how much more transit we’d get for our dollars under the old plan (which she always supported despite her general opposition to Miller).
And as the mayor has grown less popular and lost control of council, a groundswell of voters and councillors has arisen to try to revert to the original transit plan. Again, Stintz tried to be a team player, first offering Ford a face-saving compromise that would have preserved his Sheppard subway plan (his highest priority) while reverting to many of the better elements of the old plan. But Ford very publicly rejected this sensible compromise.
So here we are, and Stintz is in opposition again. This week, she lined up 23 other councillors—a majority of council—to call a special meeting today, over the mayor’s objections. The agenda: scrap the mayor’s plan, forget the compromise and revert to Miller’s plan. (Follow @TheGridTO for my and my colleague David Topping’s Tweets from the meeting.)
After years of under-delivering on her political promise, Stintz is attempting to take charge of Canada’s largest infrastructure project and lead council on its implementation. Given the antipathy of leftists and some centrists to the mayor, and given Stintz’s own centre-right credibility, she seems to be the person best positioned to lead a council consensus on this and other issues where the mayor has shown he’s completely unwilling to entertain debate or compromise. Once again, you have people talking about a possible mayoral run in Stintz’s future.
The Ford team, for its part, has begun a campaign of attacks on Stintz, saying she’s leading a “coup” and branding her a union stooge and a patsy for the residual Miller bench on council. It is entirely possible, especially if public opinion on the mayor turns favourable, that Stintz will wind up paying a very heavy political price for her dramatic break with Team Ford. But it also appears equally possible, for the first time in her career, that she could become one of the most influential members of the city’s elected government.
Stintz has always desperately wanted to help run things. Strangely, it now appears that in returning to her familiar role in opposition, she is finally getting her chance to lead.
Original Article
Source: Grid TO
Author: Edward Keenan
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