External shocks and legislative design decisions combust in municipal budget deliberations, giving Councils more credit for undesirable situations than they have control over them because the conflicts preceding budget approval are newsworthy and the final decision about how to respond happens in Council chambers.

Though broadly discrediting to municipal institutions and actors, the sequence unfolds in ways that are more damaging to economically disadvantaged areas and more damning for their municipal leadership.

This timeline of changes in local authority to generate revenue, as well as the provincial political parties from which additions and subtractions came, contextualize movements in Ontario municipalities’ actual revenue results, 1990-2020.