It can't be easy wearing the AMO hat.

by Jay Arthur

I recall a couple of years back this publication carried a cartoon of a teeter-totter with four Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) reps at one end and a whole bunch of industry folks at the other end. The AMO guys were up in the air.
Right from the beginning, this whole stewardship negotiation business has  been one-sided in terms of the numbers at the table, but it is becoming increasing clear that the poor municipalities are being outgunned in other ways.
When it comes to negotiating with the big boys, or lobbying the powers-that-be, private industry has all the aces.
Because they answer to their shareholders, first and foremost, they can be as selfish as they want and it's okay.  And they are paid to be at all those meetings. It's part of their job.
Consider the poor municipal representative however.
Already overworked with her everyday job, she gets seconded to a committee because her boss cannot make it that day and the next thing she knows she is supposed to negotiate "cost containment" and to argue why newspapers should be paying into the blue box kitty. The following week someone else is sent.
Why her municipality is there, anyway, she is not sure--something about geographical balance. Politics, in other words.
She can't help thinking her side would have more clout if all they worried about was the bottom line, and if they had people there whose job it was to do this. Or even hired guns.  Both sides would at least be negotiating from the same hymn book then. What's in it for me; what's in it for you?
That's how her union does it.
Instead, the municipalities are already obligated to run the blue box program. They had been paying of all the cost, up until last year, and now, just as the industry contribution

begins to approach the 50/50 basis on which the whole thing is founded, the rules are changed again. The cost control measures and the timetable that were negotiated in good faith last year are now to be changed, too.
(This is not the case for electronics, however. We'll watch how those negotiations unfold with great interest.)
How do these things happen?
Well, it's quite simple, coach. Industry has a lot more players on the ice than the muncipalities do and they have people lobbying the referee between periods. 
You really can't blame AMO.
Like any non-profit municipal organization they only have so much in the way of resources and they have to set priorities about where those resources are applied. In the overall scheme of things, the blue box is pretty small potatoes compared to some of the other files AMO and its staff have to deal  with.
And like any organization it relies heavily on volunteers and the availability of its members to take part on committees.
The number of committees  involved with the blue box issue is steadily increasing, it seems, and you tend to end up with  people who have little or no time to participate fully across the table from folks who are prepared, well-rested and less constrained by political considerations.
Some of these industry guys are making careers out of the stewardship process. My new friend at Big-Mart, for example, is sending in comments on procedural issues on behalf of the faltering scrap tire plan, chairs the used oil association and is making a lot of noise in the early discussions about electronics stewardship program development.
I can't help thinking it would be a much different discussion if the municipalities had the wherewithal to go out and hire a few big guns of their own to cross-check the industry heavy hitters, to get their digs in at the corners and to make their case to the ref off the ice.

This little league approach just ain't working.