defund HRM POLICE COMMISSION not the police, then the COUNCIL next

Forget de-funding the POLICE, under the WARD PRINCIPLE, why de-fund Police Commission & HRM Council instead ?

Howdy fellow bosses, one of our employees, HRM municipal solicitor Marty Ward says its perfectly alright for unelected STAFF to bring for new policy and for Police Commissioners to rubber stamp it.  (Marty didn’t indicate if the SCOC agreed though.) 

 But I don’t like it and here’s why:

When things go wrong in government - as they sometimes do - and elections roll around, we won’t want our elected councillors evading moral responsibility for the mistakes made by claiming it was the unelected Staff that wrote the policy and that the elected councillors merely rubber stamped it.

The guys with PhDs call it “The Principle of Responsible Government“ ; others who operate more on the street level, simply call it “The Buck Stops Here” : some single collection of elected individuals has to be wholly responsible for writing and passing policy decisions.

Otherwise we might as well ditch municipal Boards and elected councillors and move to elected Staff on the American model where even dog catchers must sometimes face annual re-election efforts...