The council says the spending on external lawyers was during a time its policy team was "very active" with multiple plan changes going through court and mediation.
A spokesman for the council said because of the range and complexity of legal issues the council was involved in as a regulator, it was necessary to hire lawyers outside the organisation both as specialists and because of "the sheer volume" of work to be done.
However, the spending did not sit well with at least one councillor, who said councillors were not required to approve the spending.
Cr Gary Kelliher, who 18 months ago said he was staggered by the council’s spending on consultants, now called its spending on lawyers "horrific".
"It is expense that staff decide without approval from councillors," he said.
"Plan change 7 is an example of flawed policy from staff then costing the ratepayers substantially while the same staff defend the flawed policy and watch the courts then substantially change it.
"Huge rates increases were not intended for this."
Even so, the council spokesman said that last year the council’s need for legal help increased in response to Government policy directives.
"Communities throughout Otago have been impacted by these changes and stakeholders, both farmers and environmentalists, have responded by testing the new measures in the courts," the spokesman said.
"This has resulted in a heavy legal burden for the ORC to respond, these costs are not recoverable from Government, but from ratepayers."
Appeals and mediation were costly and time-consuming processes that were part of the council’s function as a regional policy-maker and regulator, he said.
A lot of the work required last year arose as a result of this, and because the council was following direction from Environment Minister David Parker, he said.
A key example was plan change 7, which required 10 and a-half weeks of Environment Court hearings and mediation during the specified period, he said.
Plan change 7 involved the conversion of historic water privileges from gold-mining days into an interim consenting regime while the council develops its land and water plan.
It fulfilled one of Mr Parker’s recommendations, which the council agreed to meet after the critical 2019 Skelton report.
Responding to an official information request, the council said $2,441,237.07 was spent on lawyers in 2021.
The council broke the spending down into about 30 activities that required it to bring in extra lawyers.
The bulk of the spending was more than $1.5million for lawyers for "regional plans and policies", this spending included more than $1million on land and water planning alone.
Land and water planning spending included paying lawyers for the 10 and a-half weeks it took to resolve plan change 7 among other matters, the council said.
A council spokeswoman said yesterday the council had spent $1.7million the year before.
"The last calendar year was an unprecedented year for matters concerning the regional policy statement and regional plans, which are documents that implement Government statutory and other requirements," she said.
The council had only one lawyer on staff, she said.
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The facts speak for themselves. The policy team and its management are inept and are a liability. If the second proposed regional policy statement gets thrown out of court later this year for being unlawful they policy manager should resign. Being thrown out of Court once is virtually unheard of but twice is incompetence and ideological. The ORC would spend only a fraction of that $2.4M if plan change 7 or 8 or the pORPS were prepared with some competence. 100% failure once again. This is not a reasonable use of ratepayers money.
Raised by ratepayers, wasted by councilors.......they must be planning to hire a lot more lawyers this year now they've got another 73% to throw out the window.
I've only one word for this outfit...."Trainwreck"
Yet again ORC demonstrates it’s incompetence and inability to manage its regional government responsibilities. ORC used to employ qualified staff who were experts in Resource Management. Resorting to legal advice from consultants was rarely necessary because staff were experienced in the administration of the law protecting Otago’s environment. Over the last four years ORCs executive either sacked senior staff or forced them to leave due to conflict with the executive and the poisonous culture that has evolved. The replacements have demonstrated they’re not up to the job as is reflected in this huge legal bill. Of course Councillors have done nothing about it! It really is time for them and this hopeless executive to go!
So the Councillors don’t know where our rates are being spent and the executive is full of excuses!!? With a 75% increase in rates and doubling staff numbers ratepayers expect more value. These people should be competent to do the job, but they are not, they must be replaced otherwise this comedy of errors will never end?
Now we know why the Policy General Manager resigned last month! Councillors have employed an Executive that is incapable of doing the job and ratepayers are being bled dry paying for their mistakes! Please, please get rid of these people.
Would we notice if the ORC was dissolved? People with resources would keep them I guess, and no one would get new consents, but it would save a packet and probably be good for the environment!