WESTLOCK — The provincial government released a tool for comparing municipalities on their finances, a “report card” for Albertans to use to grade the places where they live or want to live.
The Municipal Measurement Index (MMI) is a “promise made and promise kept” project, said Municipal Affairs minister Tracy Allard in a press conference with rural newspapers today. It’s intended to improve fiscal responsibility and transparency at all levels of government across the province.
“The index just compiles the data that is already available publicly, but it wasn’t put together in one clear and simple interface that would be easy to use,” Allard said.
Comparisons include residential and non-residential tax rates, municipal tax levies, assessment types, debt, revenues and expenses from 2014 to 2019. Municipalities are indexed based on population, equalized assessment and geographical area, with their closest comparators within 20 index numbers.
“This tool is for Albertans. It’s intended for access for anybody in the province who would like some information either on a municipality that they live in, or a municipality that they’re considering living in. It’s also available for municipal leaders across the province,” she said.
The MMI is not in its final version yet. Allard called it a “beta” model that “intended to be iterative.” New data sets can be added based on feedback and “feasibility.” The next set of upgrades will be rolled out early 2021. Right now, it reflects basic metrics, but things like unpaid taxes from oil and gas, or the kilometres of roads each municipality maintains aren’t included.
On unpaid taxes, Allard said the issue is “front and center for myself for 2021 … I believe that we will come up with a solution in collaboration with both industry and municipalities in the new year, and hopefully early in the new year.”
How to get an A
While Allard emphasized that the MMI is a tool for Albertans and municipal leaders, the provincial government is also calling it a “report card” for fiscal responsibility.
But that’s a “misnomer,” Allard said, since the MMI is more about metrics and there’s no “grade per se” on any category. It’s still unclear, however, what makes a municipality fiscally responsible in the MMI since it compares municipalities to one another and the median across the province.
Although it seems it’s up to users to determine that: “With this tool, Albertans now have the ability to grade the performance of their local government,” Allard wrote in a press release on Monday, when the MMI was made public.
It won’t have an impact on how municipalities get provincial funding either, Allard said.
“I don’t believe that the MMI, or the fiscal report card, is intended to be used for the purposes of determining funding, but I would say smart, strategic municipal leaders will be using it, I’m sure, to plan their regional development and their economic investment attraction, and it think that that would go a long way for them to secure funds,” she said.
Ultimately, what it’s meant for is still a little unclear, apart from the government’s claim to transparency.
“I personally believe that tools are just tools … I certainly believe that this tool has the capacity to be almost like a Leatherman, where there’s multiple purposes for it.”
More to come.
