Post-ice storm, the real damage has been done. By Rob Ford.

When you get right down to it, there’s really not a whole lot to say about last week’s Premier Kathleen Wynne versus Mayor Rob Ford story. He wanted to meet to talk about the ice storm clean-up costs. She didn’t feel that was necessary. Case closed.

Besides, away from the personalities and the politics, it’s the bigger picture of deteriorating provincial-municipal relations that’s much more interesting.

This tiff over storm costs plays against the backdrop of a long and often testy relationship between city hall and Queen’s Park. Ever since the dark days of dramatic Mike Harris cutbacks and forced amalgamation, municipal leaders have spent much of their time trying to undo the damage; to get a fairer deal from the provincial government.

For the mayor of Toronto, this is a doubly important responsibility, because Toronto tends to set the precedent for other Ontario municipalities, all who face, or will face, similar challenges when it comes to fighting gridlock, building infrastructure and dealing with extreme weather events.

Under Ford’s predecessors, some progress was made. The province began funding some of the programs they had foisted on cities. Toronto was given new powers to raise revenues. Queen’s Park actually started to acknowledge that public transit was a thing for which they might be responsible.

But then came Ford, who turned all these efforts upside down. The problem with Toronto wasn’t the raw deal the city was getting from the province, he explained, but rather that there was a person paid union wages to water the plants at city hall. As Ford gained in the polls, the city’s weighty institutional issues were overshadowed by dozens of nickel-and-dime problems.

Three years into the Ford mayoralty, the results of this shift are readily apparent. Ford has given Wynne not only good reason to not meet with him about storm clean-up money, but also decent justification to deny the city’s request for money altogether.

Where his predecessors cried for a fairer deal, Ford has spun a tale of a city that has more money than it actually needs. He’s boasted of bogus billion dollar savings. He’s said there’s enough revenue to both keep property tax increases below inflation while also cutting major revenue drivers.

But, inexplicably, Ford still acts like he could make a serious case to Wynne about the city’s need for cash. Under mayors Mel Lastman and David Miller, the request would be a slam dunk, but now it’s almost impossible to square the request for money with Ford’s claim that the city already has lots of it.

Ford, of course, doesn’t understand this.

The guy may know a few things about storm cleanup, but he’s totally oblivious to the real damage he’s done.