After weeks of political, and personal, intrigue, Rob Ford has, against all odds, managed to hold onto his job as Toronto’s mayor. As of Monday night, he’s still managing to hold onto office, but after a vote by the Toronto city council, there’s not much left for Ford to cling to. On Monday, the Toronto Sun reports, in an “unprecedented move” the city council approved a series of measures that transfers much of the mayor’s authority to his deputy, leaving the embattled Ford as not much more than a figurehead of the city.
Here’s the list of powers that the council stripped from the mayor’s office, via the Toronto Star:
Councillors decided by a 37-5 vote to cut the mayor’s budget and by a 36-6 vote to transfer many of Ford’s deputies and much of his budget to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly. A 32-10 vote decreed Ford could no longer set key matters on the legislative agenda. Another 37-5 vote removed the mayor’s right to fill vacancies on the civic appointments committee.
That doesn’t leave Ford with all that much to do on the job. The mayor retains largely symbolic authority, according to the Star, as he will still be allowed to attend official functions as the city’s mayor, but little else. Before transferring much of Ford’s authority to his deputy, Norm Kelly, last week the council, stripped the mayor of the power to fire the deputy mayor.
Just before the vote, according to NBC News, “Ford gave an impassioned speech that included a tortured analogy in which he compared the Council to former Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein and himself to Kuwait.” “It’s a coup d’etat, that’s all this is,” Ford said ahead of the vote.
