Framing
City staff has evidently embarked on a new strategy of controlling the contours of debate and press coverage: Don’t give councillors documents to discuss until the very moment an issue comes before them, and don’t give reporters the documents until after council discusses them. That way, no one can study the documents in advance or otherwise form an independent view of things.
That, anyway, is what happened with Tuesday’s council meeting. With the press corps left squinting at fuzzy computer screens across the room and bumming paperwork off councillors during the meeting, you gotta wonder why we even go through the motions of covering council meetings. Maybe staff ought just create their own state media and sic the cops on anyone who dares independently report anything.
(Bull)shit storm
The staff presentation, three months after the event, on the failure of the Halifax sewer plant, is a perfect example of such framing. Council was first given the PowerPoint presentation in closed session, lest councillors ask any impertinent questions, then the whole thing was repeated before the public. Only after the encore presentation, at 9pm, was the media given printed versions of the PowerPoint slides, which daily reporters could dutifully transcribe just in time to meet midnight deadlines.
The meat of the matter—what the heck happened at the sewer plant?—was contextualized within a much longer lecture about “myths” and “misconceptions” that were irrelevant to the matter at hand, and one-sided, besides.
I was inclined to be sympathetic about the plant failure—shit happens, ya know?—but with all the message management going on, I can’t help but think there’s something being hidden.
For what it’s worth, staff says they still don’t know what happened at the plant, but they’ll be cracking open the plant’s “black box” next week to help figure it out. They say the cost of the repairs should be more than covered by $66 million in insurance and $35 million in construction bonds, but there’s no doubt there will be legal challenges to both. Oh, and the plant repairs won’t be complete until the spring of 2010.
Bus taxes
Earlier in the day, staff talked an uninformed council (because they were only handed the paperwork at the meeting) into adopting an abbreviated form of the larger tax “reform” proposal to fund transit.
Along with other hilarity, staff continued its game of shifting focus–in December, council was told to not overly worry about a motion of intent, because they could later change their minds. Two weeks ago they were told they needn’t reconsider that motion because it could all be worked out at budget time in May. Tuesday they were told they had to absolutely pass the new tax structure because they passed a motion of intent in December and staff has been working on it and needs still more time to work out the details by May. See how that goes?
Having myself not gotten the paperwork until after the meeting, I can’t do that very complicated issue justice in the short time before my deadline. I’ll have a full report here in a day or two.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.
Here’s the scam.
Keep the council looking in the direction you want them to look. Get a few days of OK press coverage and hope the reporters find other stories to chase.
Tim, you should consider hooking up with another reporter and do nothing else for a week other than the sewage mess. Right now almost all councillors will toe the line because they know this is very expensive, they will not get the insurance money until after a long legal fight, and staff have told them to keep quiet or risk damaging the HRM legal position. The fact they kept the documents from council and the press until the last possible minute tells you that the very heavy hand of lawyers is carefully framing the issue. With $50,000,000 at risk you can undersatnd why.
If we can have a public inquiry over $300,000 given to Mulroney I am damn sure we are entitled to a public inquiry into why a $56,000,000 sewage plant went tits up at the first big rainstorm.
Shit in the Fire Department, shit in the council chamber and shit in the harbour.
The bus tax is more crazy BS, they need every nickel they can get this year so staff are telling them the bus tax is a way of avoiding an increase in the general tax rate. ‘Holding the line’ BS.
Creeping tax reform one initiative at a time. Too bad we can’t recall the council, that threat would shake the bas***s up.
With so much money at stake to repair the plant ($53 Million), it would seem that a reasonable perception of possible “conflict of interest” exists if the same people who are on the hook for the money are the ones determining what went wrong and who is responsible.
At least, there is enough perceived conflict of interest to warrant considering an independent review.
However, it does cost money (taxpayers money) to commission independent investigators who don’t belong to the contractor or the insurance companies. So, I can see why it would make sense to wait and see if there is a need for that altogether, or if the insurance company will pick up the tab without objection.
The thing is, tax payers will still experience a negative impact. We all know what happens to insurance rates after a claim is issued. When was the last time you called in an insurance claim on a car accident and didn’t see your insurance payments go up as a result of that? You can bet that the cost of insurance for the plants after this $50 Million claim will go up drastically, and that’s a cost that the city will pay for as long as the plant is operating.
So, as much as the people involved are downplaying the ramifications by making it sound like the net financial impact to tax payers is ‘null’ because the insurance company will pick up the tab, that’s just simply untrue.