Deputy city manager/chief financial officer mayor's selection

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• Message from Shirley Hoy to city staff
• Text of Mayor David Miller's e-mail

Joe Pennachetti, Toronto’s second-from-the-top bureaucrat, will be moving into the top spot to be vacated by City Manager Shirley Hoy, if Mayor David Miller gets his way.

“I’m today announcing that I’m recommending the current deputy manager, Joe Pennachetti, to become the city’s next City Manager,” said Miller at a noon-hour press conference Monday, announcing that Hoy will be ending her seven-year career in charge of Toronto’s bureaucracy Oct. 6.

Miller said he’d be asking his Executive Committee and Toronto Council to simply promote Pennachetti, who is currently Toronto’s Chief Financial Officer and Deputy City Manager, to the $311,000-a-year job.

“The selection of Joe Pennachetti will mean that important work that is well underway and successfully started will continue uninterrupted,” said Miller. “Of great importance is keeping the momentum going – the inroads we have made on making Toronto a safe city safer, and continuing our very important environmental initiatives.”

Miller’s recommendation became known literally minutes after Hoy made her plans to resign public, e-mailing councillors and city staff. Hoy is a 25-year public servant who was in charge of Toronto’s community and social services division when she was appointed Toronto’s Chief Administrative Officer in 2001. In 2005, she retained the position when it was renamed City Manager in a city-wide administrative restructuring.

Over her seven-year career, Hoy has overseen crises including the SARS outbreak and the blackout, and has been centre stage in the provincial/municipal negotiations about reversing some or all of the provincial downloading.

In 2007, she was the bearer of bad news when she and Mayor David Miller announced – and delivered – mid-year cutbacks after council voted to defer passage of two controversial new taxes.
And behind closed doors, she stood behind staff when a political firestorm erupted around a poorly-communicated plan to raise recreation and hockey fees dramatically.

Hoy and Miller both denied that there was any frustration between politician and bureaucrat – and communications problems – at the root of her decision to resign.

“I don’t believe that’s true,” said Hoy when asked whether she had spoken of frustrations with members of council. “I have not those kinds of conversations with councillors. I meet with the mayor every week – it’s a regular weekly meeting and I bring a list on matters that are not urgent. But during the week we meet on an issue by issue basis. I believe that I’ve been given responsibility and discharged it responsibly.”

Miller, meanwhile, denied that there is any frustration at City Hall.

“A large organization like this one, change at the senior levels happen,” he said. “People recruit our people because they have an excellent reputation.”

Hoy, who is not leaving to take another job but said she eventually hopes to return to the health and social service sector, spoke highly of the civil service and the state of the city, and of Pennachetti, her presumed successor.

Some members of council, however, raised issues about the truncated process for selecting Hoy’s successor.

“I would think we would probably want to at least see what’s out there,” said Ward 39 (Scarborough Agincourt) Councillor Mike Del Grande. “I think any prudent manager would do that – unless we’re at a comfort level that we wouldn’t want to do that; that we want to pick people we’re comfortable with; that agree with our philosophy and will do what they’re told.”

Ward 37 (Scarborough Centre) Councillor Michael Thompson agreed with Del Grande.

“It’s not that Joe Pennachetti is a bad guy,” he said. “But the fact is the mayor has made the decision and there’s nobody on that Executive Committee who’s going to say no. He’ll have support for it.”

Ward 33 (Don Valley East) Councillor Shelley Carroll, who also chairs the city’s budget committee, maintained that in this case Miller is right to eschew a costly and lengthy search process.

“The usual trend is to go out and do the executive search – but I don’t think we should apologize for being in a place, in a time where we can say there’s an excellent succession plan and a brilliant successor who’s come up through our own city ranks. In a case like this we’re extraordinarily lucky.”