It's amazing what a politician can get away with when the stars are aligned just so.
Take our mayor. Last year, Rob Ford was able to halt work on one provincially funded light rail line in Scarborough and dramatically change the scope of another.
Although he may not have had the legal authority to do so, he understood he had the political power, and he was correct. After a series of meetings with Premier Dalton McGuinty and his people, it was done.
The Sheppard LRT was dead, and the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT, previously a surface light rail line where it ran through Scarborough and a bit of Etobicoke, and an underground line through the city core, became a plan for a long, light rail tunnel spanning the entire length of the route between Kennedy Road and Black Creek Drive.
Council never weighed in, although in a document signed by the two men and Ontario's transportation minister seemed to require it. But even documents with signatures on it didn't seem to affect the power of a mayor riding high in the polls over a premier facing an election and slipping in popularity.
Council might have stepped in. But that popular mayor discouraged a majority of them from doing so, for nearly a year and a half.
But here is the thing.
There is a difference between getting away with something and actually accomplishing it. Or to put it another way: An emperor can walk around naked for only so long before a mouthy little kid points it out.
The mouthy kid in this case was former TTC chair Joe Mihevc, who brought a lawyer to Toronto City Hall Monday to reveal a legal opinion stating the mayor had no authority to cancel Transit City by himself and that the premier had no business acceding to the mayor's demands without first hearing from council.
Now it looks like council is getting ready to get involved. They don't like the tunnel under Eglinton, at least not for the entire distance of the LRT line.
They believe the city will bankrupt itself trying to build a Sheppard subway in place of the light rail plan. There are other transit improvements - notably, along Finch Avenue West into Etobicoke, and that old light rail plan on Sheppard into Scarborough - both communities clamouring for rapid transit.
At the end of it all, the city may have a doable transportation plan that's based on a consensus broader than a single plank in Ford's cut-the-gravy-train election campaign.
Council may assert its proper authority; the premier may act according to that authority; the mayor may resume his proper place in the legal hierarchy of the city's government.
But when that happens, none of the players should pat themselves on the back. It doesn't take much courage or strength of character to only assert one's power when the stars are exactly right.