Transcript of an interview with Premier Clark yesterday:
Reporter: Some people are raising concerns about key issues going unresolved — things like the transit referendum, municipal election rules, things like that. How can you just, I guess, postpone the legislation until the spring, knowing that there are all these issues that need to be resolved now?
Clark: Well, some of them won’t be resolved — can’t be resolved — in the Legislature. The TransLink referendum is something that needs to be resolved by mayors. They need to come together with a proposal. They need to agree on it, and then we can put that forward to the public so the citizens can vote on what they’d like to see. A TransLink referendum isn’t something that would be executed by the provincial Legislature in any case.
Isn’t it?
The Mayors have had no instructions from the Province on how the referendum will be conducted under provincial law. Nor do they know who will pay for it.
This is the Premier’s initiative – yet she apparently wishes to hand it off to the local politicians as “something that needs to be resolved by the mayors.” Why would they take on the political risk, the administrative responsibility, the operational costs and the prospect of failure for something that isn’t their idea?
And who approves the wording of the question? The Province, presumably, will have to sign off on it, along with any legislative changes that require a sitting of the House. So it’s probable that nothing substantive will happen until then – now the spring of 2014 – with an outer deadline of November 15th for the vote.
If that were the case, there would be 430 days left. But if all involved wish to avoid mixing the politics of TransLink with the municipal election, where many of those running will have a stake in promoting the no vote, there may be a matter of only a few weeks to conduct the campaign between the sitting of the Legislature and the actual vote.
This is not looking good.
What Premier Clark is saying is that funding of Translink is a local issues that Mayors can chose to resolve tomorrow if they wish by approving property tax increase. But since Mayors insist on playing the game of chicken (as they have for the last 5-7 years) with the province in hope the province would give them more funding from some new magical source she is willing to give them longer string to hang themselves with in the form of a Translink referendum. In case mayors chose to go with referendum all they have to do is fill-in options A, B, and C on the referendum with option D being filled-in by the province for their own convenience and mail their contribution to Premier Clark.
So here we go…
I would like to fund future Translik expansion through:
A. (insert option here – increased sales tax?)
B. (insert option here – increased property tax?)
C. (insert option here – new car levy?)
D. None of the above – no expansion
Done and done…
P.S. Premier Clark likes to talk about herself in third person….
A better option would be:
1. Do you support the regional transit plan?
Yes
No
If yes, which is your preferred funding source:
A. Sales tax increase.
B. Vehicle levy
C. Property tax
…
A referendum that has several different “yes” options and a single “no” option basically has the same problems as our first past the post election system; its basically guaranteed to split like-minded people among different (but similar) alternatives. Otherwise, would you be okay with a referendum that asked:
“Do you support transit expansion?”
A) Yes
B) No, I’m taxed too much already
C) No, TransLink is inefficent, find savings
D) No, I don’t use/want transit
Do you see how easy it is to stack the referendum in favour of a certain outcome by splitting the same response many ways?
Richards suggestion is better, wherein if a yes vote got the majority, new taxes could be apportioned among the different alternatives (at least I’m assuming that’s what he intends?)