Note: The "Langford Democracy Forum" is a series of dispatches by a seasoned political activist from Langford, a suburban city of 40,000 adjacent to Victoria, British Columbia's capital city.
Langford is pretty typical of Canadian municipalities. It is under the thumb of an entrenched political machine that advances a business agenda of private development, public money for private contractors, keeping unions out of the municipality, and putting community interests last. In the coming October 15 municipal election, a dissident challenge is being made against the right-wing incumbents by Langford Now, a new municipal electors' organization.
These dispatches are being republished here in the interests in advancing the left's efforts at rebuilding local electoral organizations that can begin to pose a genuine challenge to both the right-wing establishment parties, and the rotten, neoliberal NDP.
With two weeks to go until the election on October 15th, I will produce posts over the next while about what I suggest people keep in mind both for the Election and for what comes after in the struggle for political democracy in Langford.
For this first post, in what I will call the Langford Democracy Forum, I want to share an overview of political Lessons for people to consider about the nature of local governments based on both the current context in Langford and my perspective which is shaped by my time as an elected school board trustee in Cowichan (2002-5).
During my term as a labour-allied trustee, I worked with the local education unions and community school leaders to build an electors organization called the Community Alliance for Public Education (CAPE). Our political priorities were to end program and service cuts, stop school closures and introduce direct democracy and open governance in what was a secretive and authoritarian governing approach by district administration and Boards (sound familiar?)
CAPE was active for a decade and eventually led a Board majority that defied the Provincial mania for endless cuts, and school sell-offs, etc. This defiance led to the Minister firing the Board in 2012.
There are clear differences between School Boards and Municipal Councils, the most evident is that SBs are specific to Education and subject to the direct authoritarian control of the Ministry of Ed while MCs are much broader in the array of services they provide while also being subject to the Power of the Province through the Muni Ministry.
Despite these differences, there are similar governance trends to consider in the conventional local government set-up:
- Unelected local bureaucrats are in charge. They craft the entirety of the elected Board/Council business meetings. The elected politicians are totally reliant on the information provided by the bureaucrats and are expected to rubber-stamp bureaucrat "recommendations" and to be salespeople for them. The elected politicians also act as pitbulls to go after dissenting elected officials.
- Governance is ruled by "Gentleman's Club Conventions". These long established practices enforce uniformity around Board/Council decisions. These conventions are presented to dissenting politicians as hard-and-fast Rules, even Legal requirements. The obsession with uniform agreement on all questions is something explicitly championed by the Langford Mayor and his Developer First slate.
- Local governance is conventionally viewed as merely a transmission belt for Provincial priorities, this is often raised as a Rule to beat back any suggestion of local democratic autonomy of community development, etc.
- Class Matters. The Class Interest of developers and related businesses is presented by the Mayor and other such officials as what is in the General Interest of workers and the communities generally through the tired rightwing argument of "trickle down" economics. Keep taxes low on the Rich (better yet get workers to pay most or all of them), provide endless public handouts to the Corporate Rich and this will magically trickle down to benefit workers...through the creation of no-security, low-pay jobs. School Boards are dominated by the Class Interests of the district management and rich parents, Boards and administration always presents cuts to unionized programs and services as being in the General Interest of the Kids.
- Secrecy is the MO of Decisions that harm community. Closed meetings are an obsession for corrupt control-freak Councils and Boards...to hide the frame-ups that replace proper public debate. Sweet heart deals get cut, dissenting politicians are intimidated or punished and the public is kept in the dark to tap down opposition.