One can certainly call it bad optics, among other things.
Mostly, though, the curious decision last week by Mayor David Miller's executive committee to send the issue of a councillor pay freeze to staff for further study - instead of opening it up to at least a full council debate - represents a missed opportunity.
That decision, which means the issue of whether to forgo a scheduled salary increase for councillors won't go to council for a full debate, essentially banishes said debate for a year-and-a-half stint in purgatory. Thus, it won't have the chance to resurface in the form of a staff report until after the next municipal election.
This has not sat well with some councillors not on the executive committee who have lobbied strongly for a debate on the council floor. Councillor Doug Holyday, for one, sees it as a curious move given the city needs to contain costs in labour negotiations.
"No matter what you put forward," he said, "it does show a lack of leadership and seems hypocritical."
While the move was within their mandate, the executive committee's decision is puzzling considered in context with other, recent decisions, namely the supporting of a plan to freeze cost-of-living increases for all non-unionized staff and on incentive raises.
The reason for that? A good one: Some quantifiable savings - in the form of $20 million over two years, at least.
On the simplest of levels, what was before the executive committee was an opportunity to allow council, in a time of serious budgetary restraint, to set a positive example as a group of elected officials in concert with what they were asking of other city employees. When it comes to elected officials' pay, it may have more symbolic implications, perhaps, but it's a good example nonetheless. There is the option for councillors to give back their cost-of-living increase on a voluntary basis. It must be noted that a number of Toronto's elected officials, including Miller, have already done so.
From this view, though, the prudent thing to do, at the very least, would have been to open the issue up for council debate and let constituents know where their representatives stand. Not giving the opportunity smacks of an executive committee cop-out, hiding under the cloak of process - a courtesy, we note, that wasn't extended to the salary issues of the non-unionized city staff. Indeed, no such lengthy period of time is required to study the implications of their pay freezes.
Some can point to the numbers achieved by a councillor salary freeze and suggest that somehow it's not that big a deal.
The truth is the issue of freezing council salaries didn't have to be a big deal - but the executive committee's decision, in light of others it has made recently, sure helped make it one.