Tax fighter to be O'Brien's chief of staff

The former head of an anti-tax lobby groupis expected to benamed chief of staff to mayor-elect Larry O'Brien.

For six years, Walter Robinsonwas directorof the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a group that works to lower taxes and "eliminate government waste."

On Friday, he is expected to beappointed to one of themost powerful non-elected positions at city hall, where he will work with senior staff to set policy and help build consensus among councillors before important votes.

O'Brien's supporters say Robinson is exactly the kind of resource O'Brien needs to help himfulfill hispledge to freeze taxes for the nextfour years.

Among them is former Ottawa mayor Jacqueline Holzman, who helped on O'Brien's campaign and has confidence inthe mayor-elect'sability to keep his promise.

"He has made a pledge that zero means zero and I tell you it can be done," she said. "And with Walter's help as the chief of staff, it makes it much easier to do."

Robinson is also bilingual and has a thorough knowledge of how city hall works qualities that will be handy to his unilingual, politically inexperienced boss.

Spokefor program cuts, against light rail

Over the years, Robinson has produced many volleys of sharp words on local political issues.

He has been talking about cutting spending at city hall since at least the 2003 municipal election, when fiscal conservative Terry Kilrea did better than expected against incumbent Bob Chiarelli.

"It may mean cutting some programs, which many people some 66,000 who voted for Mr. Kilrea, for example determined weren't priority services,"Robinson said at the time, citing grants to sports and cultural organizations as examples.

Like O'Brien, Robinson is not a fan of Ottawa's light rail plan. He hascalled light rail"colossal transportation failure" everywhere and has lobbied for Ottawa to abandon its own plan one he referred to as "a rolling white elephant, which only serves to gratify political egos and bygone era rail buffs."

He applauded last year's decision to raise Ottawa transit fares, calling it "sensible and long overdue."

He has complained about the number of unionized workerson the city's payrolland has spoken out against a program to provide clean crack pipes to Ottawa's addicts.

Robinson has been involved in other levels of governmentthrough his workat the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

In 2004, he ran for the Conservatives in the federal riding of Ottawa-Orlans and lost to Liberal Marc Godbout.

Since then, he has worked for an association of pharmaceutical research companies.