Bridging the accountability and transparency gap in inter-municipal collaboration

Municipal governments are increasingly showing interest in inter-municipal cooperation. Often overlooked in the discussion of such collaborative relationships are concerns related to accountability and transparency. In this article, we introduce a framework to measure accountability and transparency in inter-local relationships and test it with a brief case study of inter-municipal cooperative agreements collected from the Greater Toronto Area. Overall, the agreements collected score very low on our accountability scale, mainly because of low levels of public access and poor internal accountability. We conclude the study by examining the challenges of having multiple lines of accountability in local service collaboration.