Toronto Race for Mayor: John Tory Accused of Lying and Fraud in TorStar Opinion Piece.

John Tory, leading candidate for Mayor in Toronto, has been taken to task severely in an opinion piece published in the Sunday Star.

www.thestar.com...

As mayor, John Tory could derail Toronto by trying to implement his half-baked, financially fraudulent transit plan.

Toronto's municipal election has been all about transit. Mayoral candidate John Tory, right, has has been pushing his SmartTrack plan, but John Barber says the city will have trouble paying its $3-billiion share of the costs without raising taxes.

The author still manages to blame Ford for Tory's proposal, though, in true Toronto Star fashion, but the bare bones of his criticism are quite valid. TIF, Tax Increment Financing has been proven to be something of a "bait and switch" strategy, at least in New York, where forcast tax revenues have failed to meet expectations and the taxpayers have been on hook for debt service payments that have yet to lower the principle amount owed on the initial loans ($3 Billion).

The facts are laid out clearly in a 2013 report from the New York Independent Budget Office, which shows that tax revenues generated by the project have fallen far short of expectations, forcing city taxpayers to pay an ever-greater share of the interest on its debt. Told that New York’s TIF-financed $3-billion investment would cost them nothing, taxpayers have so far paid almost $300-million on the ongoing bailout. The city’s budget analysts expect such voluntary “interest support payments” to continue rising for the foreseeable future. The debt is still $3-billion.

Would a candidate like Tory propose such a scheme knowing full well the likely outcome would leave the citizens of Toronto on the hook with substantial tax increases. Personally, I believe he would. Either that or he is a very stupid man, which I don't believe.

My own opinion is that Tory has an understanding with the provincial government of Kathleen Wynne not to press her government for large amounts of infrastructure support, hence his backing of this very dubious proposal for fund raising.