[URBAN NOTE] "Mayor Rob Ford cannot be rehabilitated"

[rfmcdonald]

Royson James' Toronto Star column expresses what seems to be a broad consensus emergent throughout Toronto's media, even--I suggest--the Toronto Sun. (The comments at the critical Sun article I linked to seemed mixed between supporters and opponents, a seachange.)

Online and on talk radio, the mayor still enjoys a measure of support from the diehards. His heart is in the right place, they say. He is a lovable bear of a man. He is helping underprivileged kids. The mayor should be praised for volunteering. Charges of conflict of interest and misuse of taxpayers’ money are petty.

Hmmmm. Didn’t Ford rise to fame by attacking city councillors for their “misuse” of taxpayers’ money? Wasn’t that the foundation of his run for mayor, why people fell in love with him?

Ford attacked councillors who used their office budget to buy cellphones. He railed against one councillor for buying an espresso machine to supply beverages for constituents who visited city hall.

When a councillor rented a bunny costume for the local Easter parade in her ward, he led the protest against her.

Donate $250 from the office budget toward a local baseball team for kids in the ward, and Rob Ford would slag the councillor for waste. In fact, he lumped all those expenditures as the “gravy” he would scoop out of city hall.

Now, it seems, the mayor refuses to see distinct and unmistakable evidence of conflict and inappropriate spending in his own office.

The reason he was in court last week was because he refused to heed concerns about his clear conflict of interest with his football foundation. Ford used city letterhead to solicit money from lobbyists for the foundation. He didn’t stop when the integrity commissioner asked him to. He refused to return the $3,150 he collected. And he voted on the matter when it came to council with a recommendation he pay up — clearly a conflict of interest.

[. . .]

Anyone who has dispassionately examined the mayor knows this: He doesn’t care what anybody thinks. He has a nose for trouble. He thumbs his nose at the world. And he is still that rich kid from north Etobicoke who gets away with bullying those around him, because he can.