Submission: Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill
Parliament’s Governance and Administration Committee is considering the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill (“Bill”). Franks Ogilvie submitted on this bill, making suggestions on how the Bill could better promote democratic accountability in local government and reduce wasteful spending.
What the bill does
An Explainer on the Bill can be found here
Refocusing councils on core services
The Bill is part of the Government’s push to bring councils “back to basics”; refocussing local authorities on core services to limit rate rises. The Bill removes the four “well-beings” (economic, environmental, social, and cultural) from the Act’s local government purposes section, which the Government argues promotes spending on non-core services. The Bill will also require local authorities to have particular regard to the contributions that core services make to their communities.
Strengthening transparency
The Bill will require local authorities to report on their contractor and consultant expenditure, and will expand the matters that local authorities must report on to better allow the public to assess council performance. The Bill will empower the Secretary for Local Government to issue standardised codes of conduct and standing orders that will be binding on all councils. The Bill also expands access to “reasonably necessary” council information for elected members.
Regulatory relief
The Bill modernises notice requirements, removing the requirement for 6-yearly services delivery reviews, and clarifying chief executive authority and third-party capital contributions. The bill also removes the requirement for councils to consider the relevance of tikanga Māori when appointing directors to council controlled organisations.
Franks Ogilvie’s submission on the Bill
The Bill is an opportunity to make other improvements to the Local Government Act, particularly in re-balancing the relationship between elected members and council officials. Our submission made the following suggestions:
Improve councillor rights to information and oversight of their local authorities
The firm is aware of some situations where council officials withheld information from elected members, limiting democratic governance and oversight of council operations. The current Bill drafting could be strengthened by including a presumption that councillors have access to council documents, other than in specific cases where there was a good reason for withholding them (such as when disclosure would breach another law or individual privacy rights, or where the member seeking the document had a conflict of interest, or had an otherwise improper reason for obtaining the document).
Limit councillor disqualifications from voting on the basis of pre-formed views
The firm knows of instances where council officials have told elected members that they are disqualified from voting on certain matters on the basis that they have pre-conceived views on those matters. Councillors are elected on the basis of these views, and they should not be prevented from voting on matters on that basis. The bill should make this explicit in the Local Government Act, to reflect the common law position that elected officials are allowed to bring views to their political decision-making, provided they retain an open mind.
Clarify the illegality of using council resources for local government electioneering
Use of council resources for electioneering is already unlawful, but as recent examples of Councils using resources on Maori ward positions demonstrate that the law is not sufficiently clear. The illegality of council electioneering be made explicit in the Local Government Act, to make the law clear for local authorities and better enable legal accountability.
To read our full submission, please click here.
For further information regarding this or similar issues please contact Director, Brigitte Morten
