For as long as I’ve been covering politics, politicians have been selective about transparency – at all three levels of government.
Politicians gain power and realize the convenience of secrecy: a cover-up is only a cover-up if it fails.
There’s also the problem that if people know there is a problem, they begin asking their politicians to solve it. [There was a time when an emergency room wait time of three hours was considered a problem; today, we’d be thankful for such a miracle]
This brings me to Hamilton City Council’s upcoming budget debates: there will be plenty of hypocrisy, and some has already been displayed during December.
Selective Transparency: The Police Budget versus the Bike Share Subsidies
Council members are selective about transparency. They push to see the books on spending they don’t like while opposing transparency on spending they uncritically support.
The Hamilton Police budget and the Hamilton Bike Share Inc. subsidy illustrate this dynamic well.
On policing, the Hamilton Police Board initially withheld its 2025 budget from the public, and only two council members (Cameron Kroetsch and Tammy Hwang) spoke against the secrecy.
The Police Board has spun a narrative that the police budget is only increasing by 5.7 percent, but the actual increase is 10.89 percent.
[5.7 percent is the levy impact, the operating budget increase is 10.89 percent. The Board is using reserve funds to offset the tax increase in 2025, with the full tax levy impact being realized in 2026.]
Councillors who favour police budget increases were okay with this, after all, it was their “side” being secretive.
On December 4, Council debated Hamilton Bike Share Inc.’s request for a 50 percent ($258,000) increase to its annual municipal subsidy.
A few councillors stated they wanted to see HBSI’s financial statements to conduct due diligence. Bike Share Inc. does not want to share its financials with the Council.
UPDATE: HBSI states it will provide financials to Council, provided this is done in closed session. They state financials were shared in 2022 in closed session.
In this instance, the calls for transparency were reversed. Councillors who were silent about the police budget secrecy are now claiming that all public spending should be transparent.
Other councillors argued there was no need to see the bike share operator’s financials —they feel the program is delivering a valuable and essential service.
The request for more funding comes as the bike share operator added over $500,000 per year in revenue after McMaster’s undergraduate students voted to pay a $24.50 per student fee in exchange for universal memberships.
HSBI is facing a unionization drive from its staff.
Ultimately, Council decided to defer the HSBI matter to a January meeting.
Call me a journalist, but I think Council and the public, should be able to evaluate all public spending: we have the right to see how HSBI (and the police) are spending public funds.
Production Details
v. 1.0.0
Published: January 3, 2025
Last updated: January 3, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman
Update Record
v. 1.0.0 original version
v. 1.1.0 UPDATED: HBSI sent an email stating they will share financials with City Council in closed session.
This is a little bit apples and oranges. The point of seeing the financials of Bike Share was to see if they were on their way to being self sustaining, or going in the opposite direct, to plan for the future.
What happens if council rejects the police budget? Can HPS appeal to the province? I do agree that we should look for waste in the HPS budget, but this should be an ongoing concern, not just at budget time.
If you want to review all spending, how much time should we give the budget process? HPS would take many sessions. What about Hamilton Water? Parks? Garbage collection and transfer stations? Sometimes I see 5 or 6 employees working when maybe 4 would do? (a little bit of sarcasm there, but you know what I mean).
Bikes and police are good examples though of different peoples no go zones. The upcoming e-bike program is an initiative of the Climate Change office, whose head makes $200k+/year and I think about a $2million budget (not sure if this includes salaries). Even though this is an initiative for climate change, there are no climate change based results they are going to measure. They wont even be able to say if the program has taken a single car off the road.