With Bill 20, Danielle Smith sows fear and loathing (and confusion) in Alberta councils, big and small

It's hard to get 260 Alberta municipal governments to agree on much, which is why their blanket organization seldom has anything provocative to say.

What advocacy points can members as disparate as Calgary, Lethbridge, the town of Two Hills and the villages of Czar, Barons and Bawlf agree on? Safer fare, typically — suggestions that the province should consult more widely, or provide predictable funding for infrastructure, and more of it.

This is why it's worth noting when the leader of Alberta Municipalities (ABmunis) doesn't mince words in reaction to the legislation that gives the provincial cabinet enhanced powers to unilaterally remove councillors and repeal or change local bylaws.

"Bill 20 is an attempt by the provincial government to grab more power and wield more control over how people choose to live in their own communities," ABmunis president Tyler Gandam told reporters this week.

"I can't say this strongly enough: if passed, the proposed legislation will fundamentally redraw the blueprint of our local democracy and alter how people's local needs are met and who represents them."

There's been much commentary on how Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservatives have sparred with the councils of Edmonton and Calgary over matters like the single-use plastics bylaws and neighbourhood rezoning.

And after her recent bill on federal deal gatekeeping took aim at some of the major deals those cities struck on housing and electric buses, Bill 20 seemed to have them in its crosshairs too — after all, only those two municipalities are getting the partisanized election system that municipal leaders had widely opposed.

Indeed, the sweeping legislation to overturn municipal decisions gets called "authoritarian" by Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, and that it "strips the voting public's right" to choose their path by Mayor Jyoti Gondek of Calgary.

The UCP's manoeuvre on low-income transit passes, for just those cities, seemed to bolster that perception, even if Smith's team thought better of that budget cut after a day.

But it's not just the cities that went majority NDP last election that feel threatened by Bill 20.

The vocal dissent is also coming from those smaller communities that reliably vote conservative.

"Overruling municipal bylaw authority calls into question the integrity of a municipal council," said Didsbury Mayor Rhonda Hunter. 

"They need to quit meddling in our business," said St. Paul Mayor Maureen Miller, who criticized the unnecessary new "super-powers."

Grande Prairie Coun. Dylan Bressey protested: "This government doesn't appear to see municipal governments as a legitimate, fully elected, order of government, they're increasingly seeing us as a wing of the provincial government, which is not how I think local voters feel."