Both Rob and Doug Ford lie frequently, but they've been dropping one lie lately that really irks me. They keep claiming they've saved Toronto taxpayers "over a billion dollars".
I'll let Matt Elliott take it from here. He's decided to challenge the Ford's on their fiscal record while others pursue Rob's lie about the existence of a recording showing him smoking crack, calling Justin Trudeau a "fag" and Don Bosco students "just fucking minorities".
False. Absolutely, definitively false. I’ve turned this number over in my head again and again and I can’t find any fair accounting of the city’s finances that supports the Fords as saving anywhere near a billion dollars. When Mayor Rob Ford took office, the gross operating budget was $9.214 billion. This year, it’s $9.405 billion. That represents an increase of about $200 million, not a decrease of a billion dollars.
The net operating budget - the part of the budget you pay with your property taxes - increased from $3.534 billion to $3.713 billion. Also not a reduction of a billion dollars.
No math supports anything close to the $1 billion dollar claim and I'm sick of hearing Rob and Doug drop this figure like it's fact. It's yet another bald-faced lie but this one can't be blamed on a massive media conspiracy.
By now it's clear, however, that Ford Nation has no interest in facts.
