In the last blog entry, I referenced the February 2015 decision of Regional Councillors to vote themselves a 2.93% raise (and, at the same, time remove the integrity commissioner, because it was too expensive). Then, when I was on-air yesterday for the Noon30, we got talking about Hydro One’s board voting themselves a raise, which turned into a more general discussion about politicians voting for raises for themselves.

If I am elected to Regional Council, I will bring a motion to have regional councillors paid based on a formula and remove their ability to vote for raises for themselves. Continue reading “Politicians shouldn’t be voting to give themselves a raise” →

What is the definition of integrity? What does it mean to have integrity? How can our regional government demonstrate integrity?

I feel like we all should have known; like we all really did know that integrity would be a challenge for this term of Regional Council when one of this Council’s first decisions was to remove the integrity commissioner and give themselves a raise (on the same night, and their rationale for removing the integrity commissioner was to save money…and the raise they gave themselves was more per year than the cost of the integrity commissioner).

Continue reading “Integrity in government” →

Most of us know what our federal and provincial governments are responsible for, but things often get pretty muddy for people when we start talking about regional and municipal governments. What’s important to note, though, is that decisions made at the regional and municipal levels of government are the ones that most directly impact your daily life. Continue reading “Your regional government is responsible for….” →

What do I mean when I say it’s time to Reset the Region?

If you’re tuned into regional politics at all, I can’t imagine that you’re not angry, frustrated, or appalled (or all three!) at the behaviour of this term of regional council.

We have a regional council with several members who tried to influence (to put it mildly) how our local news is reported. We have a regional council who unlawfully seized the property of a local journalist and had him removed from a council meeting. Continue reading “Reset the Region” →

Following is a column I wrote for the St. Catharines Standard. It was published on April 1, 2018 (but it’s not joke).

This municipal election, more than any other I can think of in the nearly 25 years since I have been old enough to vote, [you] need to vote. We all need to vote.

More than voting, though, everyone who is eligible to vote needs to educate themselves about both the issues that are important to their municipality and our region and each of the candidates running to represent us. Continue reading “We can fix municipal government by voting” →