The reality is a completely different story.
Councils are made up of staff, who are expected to have expertise in carrying out the functions determined by legislation and councillors, who are chosen democratically by the people.
The decisions made by councillors can only work well if they are properly informed and can openly talk about what they are considering.
This allows for people to provide more information if they think councillors are not taking proper matters into account, or to vote them out if they are unhappy with the choices.
To bridge the gap between the knowledgeable staff and the accountable councillors there is a crucial piece of legislation in the Resource Management Act (RMA).
The RMA requires section 32 evaluation reports when considering making major plans.
Section 32 requires them to provide a report which informs the councillors and the public of what Parliament thought needed to be known when making such decisions.
These reports must look at whether the proposal is the best way of achieving the objectives and identify other reasonably practical options, assessing reasonableness and efficiency.
They must summarise what the reasons would be for choosing the options.
They must identify the costs and benefits regarding the anticipated effects on the environment, economically, socially and culturally.
They must look at the likely economic growth and employment opportunities to be provided or reduced.
They must assess the risk of acting or not acting with insufficient information.
There is also a requirement to make these reports public at least by the time the council notifies the plan.
What actually happens is that any possible components to this crucial report first see the light of day at the meeting where the plan is expected to be notified.
Councillors are completely unable to talk about the information provided, they have no way of knowing whether what staff put in front of them on that day is sufficient for an informed decision.
Staff are often well placed to give advice on the technical, cultural (Māori) and environmental effects of a proposed plan.
What there seems to be very little of is any expertise about economic effects and the like.
Neither do planning staff seem to have any way of understanding how to consider such effects.
This is not the fault of staff.
They are chosen for planning expertise.
And people who are attracted to planning roles may well have joined the staff because they want to make a difference and improve the environment.
This can lead to staff having a focus on environmental outcomes without any useful understanding of the downsides of these choices for those who must follow the plans.
This means that staff can say, for example, that the cost of a particular rule is likely to be say $500 per farmer, because only the cost being paid to the council is taken into account.
Farmers who get wind of the proposal could say it will likely cost many thousands of dollars.
The actual costs cannot be talked about because the report is secret until after the decision is made.
Another area of concern is proposing short-term consents without being honest and upfront about the effect and costs of such consent terms on activities throughout Otago.
If ORC staff cannot usefully quantify economic costs and effects as are required in a section 32 report they can get outside independent opinion.
However, rather than do so they are tempted to say it is too hard to quantify, and to say this in secret until it is too late for councillors to get to the bottom of the situation.
I have heard from someone who has some expertise that the costs of the proposed LWRP could well be somewhere in the region of $584 million for fencing and $300m for lost land capacity.
There may be others who have a different and expert view.
It may be that the environmental effect for some councillors is worth many hundreds of millions of dollars of cost to farmers.
The secret section 32 report explains why the water quality will be the thick end of a billion dollars better, and that there is no other more effective way of achieving this.
And it may not.
But councillors must have the information available or they cannot do their job.
It is also not good enough to suggest that a report without the costs as well as the benefits is acceptable because it can be corrected by submitters going to the Environment Court.
This is consuming, expensive and stressful for others to have to try to correct plans which could have been done better in the first place.
At $18m-plus it should be pretty close to right when notified.
Open development along the way would have ironed out most of the issues.
The job of staff under section 32 is to give good information to inexpert councillors so that they can make decisions which they can stand behind.
Section 32 is not just advice to councils.
It is peppered with the word "must".
For councillors to suggest that Environment Minister Penny Simmonds is bullying by requiring councillors to do their job misses the point entirely.
It may be that councillors are happy to increase the burden on farmers with the effect of making sheep farming less economic and encouraging the likes of the closure of the Smithfield plant and the loss of 600 jobs.
But councillors are obliged to follow the law and at least take these effects into account.
Maybe all of these things are covered in the section 32 report when it finally comes out of its secret box — after all it is rumoured to be 1200 pages long.
The council is refusing to provide this report so we will not know until it is too late.
Councillors will not be able to ask questions and get answers from anyone but staff on the day.
No councillor is doing the job they must do unless these things can be openly discussed, any more information needed provided and a thorough and readable report finally provided which satisfies the requirements.
The law does not say a council can refuse to do its job by voting 7/5 to go ahead anyway.
• Hilary Calvert is a former Otago regional councillor, MP and Dunedin city councillor.
