As the first day of December draws to a wet and foggy close, things on City Hall’s second floor are becoming a little clearer.
December 1, you see, is the first day of the new term for council - which means that first-time councillors-elect are now first-time councillors, and able to take occupancy of their second floor city hall offices. So fellows like Gord Perks and Adam Vaughan who’ve been wandering the corridors of power without so much as a place to hang their coats (Vaughan has been taking advantage of his old CityTV office for that purpose; Perks, the environmentalist who now represents Ward 14, has been on his own) now at least have somewhere to sit. And now they, like the rest of council, can brood about who gets and does not get into the mayor’s executive committee.
For the first time this year, Miller will have the power to appoint seven councillors to the committee, and those councillors will also chair other powerful committees. In the past, the mayor had to wheedle and threaten his way to a majority to appoint anybody; now, thanks to the City of Toronto Act, the mayor can just pick who he likes.
With all that power at his command, Miller executed his first act of strategic political genius for the 2006-2010 term of office.
He got out of town.
The mayor and his family was in San Francisco this week - utterly incommunicado to, so far as any of us can tell, anyone at all. And with him went the naughty-nice list that will form effectively his first cabinet.
As one councillor told me today, this leaves everyone but a few close confidantes of the mayor nothing to do but stand around the cafeteria dumping their tea onto the floor tiles and reading the leaves. Will Howard Moscoe be chair of anything this year? If he’s not, will the Toronto Transit Commission go to that vice-chair of everything Joe Mihevc, or council’s twenty-something wunderkind Adam Giambrone? What about Gloria Lindsay Luby, the mayor’s best friend in Etobicoke? Glenn De Baeremaeker, the mayor’s only friend in Scarborough? Will the chair of the budget committee (this not a Miller appointment but arguably the most important position on council) go to Shelley Carroll or… or…
Okay, that one probably goes to Shelley Carroll. But everything else is a big gut-knotting mystery - a mystery that the mayor, by his absence and silence, perpetuates until Tuesday.
I probably shouldn’t venture to guess the mayor’s mind - because really, I have no idea. But this is a blog, and blogs do that sort of thing all the time, so what the heck. Here are some Friday afternoon guesses for who will wind up in the inner circle. Those of you reading this after Tuesday can feel free to rub my nose in my mistakes in the comment section below.
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