The Toronto Star just uploaded a story on the TTC increasing fares by 15 cents. Accompanying the story is a nifty graphic in pdf format(application/pdf Object).

Two things jump out:

1. The TTC by far has hired more new people than even the combined EMS services. That’s pretty impressive, given that the police are hiring away. Just under 1,500 people have been added to the TTC payroll between 1998 and 2006, during a time of reduced services, some of which were modestly brought back, and increasing crowding. So what are all these shiny new people doing?

2. The city’s operating budget has increased by almost 30 percent since 2001 according to the Star. Check out the bar graphs though. These increases are all post-amalgamation, post-Harris-dumping-provincial-responsibilities-on-us years, and it’s interesting to see when the real hikes started.

In years 2001, 2002, and 2003 — pre-Mayor Miller years — the budget went up by $100 million, $100 million, and $200 million respectively, about the rate of inflation. The city plundered the capital and reserve funds by $41 million in 2001, almost doubling in 2002, and going up a further $27 million in the election year of 2003 when Miller was first elected.

Miller knew about these fund raids and the total operating budget in 2003 because he was on Council. During that election year, he talked about a clean sweep through City Hall in response to the computer leasing scandal, but the increasing raids on the reserve funds was not top of his issue. No wonder. Look what he did once in power.

In his first year, he increased the budget by the same amount as Mel Lastman had in the previous year — $200 million — but increased the raid on reserve funds by $62 million, for a total of $161 million (why would he need to? what happened to revenue?). After that, he went on a spending spree.

He increased the budget by $500 million, the deficit by $121 million; the next year, $500 million, dropping the deficit by $9 million to $273 million; the next year, 2007, a further $200 million increase to a total of $7.8 billion, making up the drop in deficit by increasing it another, oh, measly $111 million to $384 million. And that’s where we stand. All these increases are higher than inflation. Reverse one of those increases, and we’d have the deficit covered.

Clearly, he knew we were heading for a crisis the first time he was elected. Clearly, he accelerated the process, proving his unconcern, neither showing his knowledge of this growing problem through reduction in Councillor salaries nor putting up huge graphs showing the magnitude of the problem each and every day during each and every budget time. Clearly, he knew we were knee-deep in crisis during the last election, and didn’t utter one word about it because he wanted to be in power and that just may have sunk him.

What I want to know is, where the heck was the media in all this, especially during the last election? Have they degenerated to a bunch of press release regurgitators such that they were incapable of blaring the truth about Toronto’s budget crisis and challenging each item of spending?

This hit the crisis mark in 2005, judging by the numbers. But quite frankly, the first intimation was in 2001 and all the players — Mel Lastman, David Miller, Councillors, and the media — fell down on the job in communicating to us how serious this issue was until just last June when Miller tried to bribe into being his tax hikes. Worst of all, 905ers will use this graph to prove that much of Toronto’s fiscal mess is not of the province’s doing, but City Hall’s, more specifically Miller’s City Hall. Great, just great.

Related posts:

1. Budget Increase
2. The Budget Is Out… Are The Gloves Off?
3. The Best Budget Money Can Buy
4. Ontario’s Surplus, Our Shortfall
5. Miller Caves, or Does He?