Finally caught up with Mike Magee last week.
Who's Mike Magee?
City hall watchers know who he is.
And so should you, since he was one of the founders of Vision Vancouver and a lead architect in the party's ambitious agenda at city hall as Mayor Gregor Robertson's longtime chief of staff.
Now he is the mayor's "special advisor' and will continue to earn his $120,000-plus-a-year salary.
It's kind of an odd title, don't you think, considering Magee has been advising his buddy in a special way since Vision won power in the 2008 civic election.
That's a point I made with the mayor a few weeks back when he announced Magee was turning over chief of staff duties to Kevin Quinlan, his longtime communications guy.
"He has certainly been a very special advisor to date, but he's had all the day-to-day duties of chief of staff," Robertson said.
Magee's new role will see him spend a lot of time in Ottawa, essentially hassling bureaucrats, ministers and even the prime minister to ensure Vancouver gets its fair share of cash for transit, affordable housing and other infrastructure.
So it was only fitting that when I spoke to Magee by telephone last week that he was in Ottawa. His schedule included meetings with Trudeau government types responsible for housing and transit.
Right off the top, he said: "I'm not a paid lobbyist. I don't think that's a fair characterization at all. I'm a full-time staff person."
After eight years as chief of staff, and longer than that building the Vision Vancouver party, Magee said it was the right time for him to make a change.
The position, however, is only for four months, with both Magee and the mayor saying it will be reassessed after that period expires. Magee, 51, says he's not retiring but wasn't sure that he would be on the mayor's staff by the 2018 election.
"Ask me that in September," he said.
An answer like that makes me wonder whether he's hiding something about Robertson's next move — even though the mayor has told me twice that he plans to seek a fourth term in the 2018 vote.
"Life changes, it's politics," Magee said. "Things could change for the mayor that would change his mind. But right now he's loving what he's doing and he continues to say he's going to run for another term. So he's running for another term until he says he's not."
Anyway, back to Magee's new role...
So how's he being received in Ottawa?
"Good," he said. "They like this move. They see it as very complementary and very helpful, as they are still building capacity and they are looking to us in Vancouver for data and information and advice on a range of issues that we're dealing with from a big city's agenda point of view."
So why couldn't the mayor do that?
"The mayor does do that. He talks to the prime minister but he can't be here as much as I can be here. He's the main guy that carries the relationship, but there's a lot detail stuff that the mayor's not going to get into. That's what I'll do."
Added Magee: "The reality is, Ottawa is just a super-Quebec-and- Ontario-focused bubble. And if you're not in their face constantly, talking about B.C. and Vancouver, they tend to drift on to other things pretty quickly."
Back in Vancouver, Magee's new position has caught the attention of Green Party Coun. Adriane Carr. So much so that she issued a press release, with this doozy of a headline: "Councillor Carr to table motion calling on Robertson Chief-of-Staff-turned-city-paid lobbyist Magee to lobby hard against Kinder Morgan pipeline approval."
The Trudeau government has yet to state its final position on the Kinder Morgan proposal, which calls for twinning its pipeline and almost tripling its current 300,000 barrels of oil per day capacity to 890,000, which would lead to an increase in oil tanker traffic in Vancouver waters.
Magee's response to Carr's release, noting Vision's opposition to the project and scheduled meetings with the federal environment ministry: "We don't need a motion for that — that's for sure."
mhowell@vancourier.com
@Howellings
