Rob Ford says he brought Toronto back from a “fiscal cliff,” city manager says “nope”

Rob Ford has taken issue with a new report from the Institute of Municipal Finance and Governance that argues that Toronto’s per-household spending is roughly the same now as it was a decade ago (before Ford was elected), and that the city needs more tax revenue to maintain its services and infrastructure. In a press release issued in response to the report, the mayor, as he has in the past, claimed complete responsibility for the city’s financial stability—or, as the release put it: “The reality is, my administration brought the City of Toronto back from the edge of a fiscal cliff.” In response to that claim, the Sun reports that city manager Joe Pennachetti, Toronto’s top bureaucrat, took a rare rhetorical shot at the mayor during a press conference. “That terminology I do not support,” he said. “We’ve had a double-A credit rating for the last 10 years. We have never been on a fiscal cliff.”