Bridging the accountability and transparency gap in inter-municipal collaboration

ABSTRACT

Municipal governments are increasingly showing interest in inter-municipal cooperation. Often overlooked in the discussion of such collaborative relationships are concerns related to accountability and transparency. In this article, we introduce a framework to measure accountability and transparency in inter-local relationships and test it with a brief case study of inter-municipal cooperative agreements collected from the Greater Toronto Area. Overall, the agreements collected score very low on our accountability scale, mainly because of low levels of public access and poor internal accountability. We conclude the study by examining the challenges of having multiple lines of accountability in local service collaboration.

KEYWORDS:

• Inter-Municipal Cooperation
• shared services
• accountability
• transparency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Before moving forward with study, a quick note about the municipal accountability and transparency context in Ontario. Canadian municipalities are subject to a great deal of provincial supervision and intervention. The Ontario government moved to strengthen municipal accountability and transparency regimes with the passage of the Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act, 2006, also known as Bill 130, which substantially altered the powers and responsibilities that local governments held under the Municipal Act, 2001 (Alcantara, Leone, and Spicer 2012). Bill 130 provided two different sets of accountability and transparency policies: mandatory policies – that reflected a number of specific areas such as procurement practices, hiring practices, the sale and disposition of land, public notices, and delegation of council’s powers and duties – and option policies – a code of conduct for council and for local boards of the municipalities (Alcantara, Leone, and Spicer 2012).

2. Municipalities could also contract with a private sector company to deliver a service. Such an examination is beyond the scope of this study. For more information on the distinction between public and private service contracting, see Dachis (2010).

3. Adopted from Graefe, Simmons, and White (2013).

4. Of note, Lyons (2014) only utilises the ‘Public Access’ and ‘External Accountability’ dimensions.

5. It should be noted that these measures come from the agreements themselves and do not take into account any potential changes in the agreements over time, which is ultimately one drawback of using a modified GAT. It is possible that the governments included in this agreement have taken measures since the original inception of the agreement that may either increase or reduce the transparency and accountability surrounding these arrangements.

6. The Chippewas of the Georgina Island First Nation is included in the Statistics Canada CMA, but are not included in this study. Our focus in municipal cooperation. For information on inter-local cooperation between municipal and Indigenous governments, see Nelles and Alcantara (2011,2014).

7. New Tecumseth and Bradford West Gwillimbury lie outside York, Peel, Halton and Durham Regions, but are part of Simcoe County, a two-tier structure north of the Greater Toronto Area.

8. Most of the categories included in the list are self-explanatory, although some may require elaboration: ‘Emergency Services’ encompasses all areas of emergency planning or delivery, such as fire protection, dispatch or reporting; ‘Transportation’ includes road construction, maintenance, snow removal and the provision of public transportation services; ‘Waste’ includes all landfill services, collection and maintenance or recycling programming and, finally, ‘Administrative’ includes all items relating to staffing or other uncategorised maintenance, such as information technology maintenance and sharing.

9. There is a $5.00 charge for submitting a request for information under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

10. Under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, municipalities can extend the time needed to gather information for a variety of reasons, mainly due to the staff time necessary to fulfil the request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zachary Spicer

Zachary Spicer is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, where he teaches courses in local government, Canadian politics and public administration. His first book, The Boundary Bargain: Growth, Development and the Future of City-County Separation, was published in May 2016 by McGill-Queen’s University Press.