In the news again. The Otago Regional Council has just bought the old Warehouse site in Dunedin, and now plans what will undoubtedly prove to be a hugely expensive refit for new headquarters there. Hard on the heels of that announcement came the news that council rates will nearly double this year.
Is that noise we hear a collective groan of despair from all the council’s long-suffering ratepayers ?
The ORC (both councillors and staff) appear to agree on one thing — the need, as they put it, to “turn their ship around”.
As most will know, major changes to our local government and planning legislation are already in the pipeline. So the time is right for all to be thinking about what now needs to be done. And, especially some might think, in regard to the future of our regional governance.
The last major revamp of our local government law occurred more than 30 years ago, in the late ’80s. As part of that revamp the old regional catchment boards were dismantled, with their functions, primarily water and soil management, being devolved to the then-to-be-established regional councils.
Many community leaders way back then expressed serious misgivings about the introduction of the proposed new regionals — primarily because they felt they would prove to be an expensive and unnecessary extra tier of local government.
But, also, because it was felt that, once established, they simply wouldn’t have enough to do.
Apart from the old catchment board functions, they were to be assigned just one function under the new planning legislation, namely the management of emissions to water and air — functions that some felt the district authorities might well have handled much more efficiently and cheaply.
Another concern was that, to fill the shortfall in their workload, the regionals would end up picking up functions they were ill-equipped to manage — and finish up making a mess of them. (Think urban public transport or rabbit management, for example).
Yet another concern was that, because of the geographical size of the proposed regional jurisdictions, elected representatives would find it difficult to effectively engage with their constituents — with the likely outcome that the overall quality of the council’s service delivery would suffer.
Governors remote from their governed tend to breed the very worst kind of bureaucracies — empire builders in ivory towers. And, once created, they are devilishly difficult to eliminate — more difficult even than rabbits in Central Otago.
Given the present state of the play it might be difficult for the ORC (and all the other regionals) now to argue that those early concerns weren’t all fully justified.
Back in the day the main justification for setting up the regionals was the notion that the districts would be unable to resolve the cross-boundary issues that water and soil management would inevitably throw up without becoming mired in territorial partisanship.
With the wisdom of hindsight some might now say that was a woefully inadequate justification for the setting up of a whole new bureaucracy —– a nationwide network of regional councils.
Wouldn’t a better solution have been to legally require the districts to liaise, consultatively and collaboratively, with one another in order to resolve any such issues should they arise. And, then, set up just one appellate authority — staffed by folk with the appropriate skills — and with the primary function of arbitrating such issues as proved to be too difficult to resolve at district level.
Better just one extra bureaucracy, than a hugely costly nationwide network.
Back in the day pest management, especially the rabbits, were very effectively controlled by the old rabbit boards: small community groups, typically populated by local landowners, elected by their communities triennially, concurrently with local body elections, and funded by a community rate.
Farmers throughout Otago, with long enough memories, would likely concur those boards worked a treat, and many still wonder why they were ever dismantled.
Put bluntly, we might be drawn to conclude that most of the ORC’s current functions would be better devolved back to the appropriate district authorities (and reinstated pest control boards), whose elected representatives are, generally, closer to the action and with more skin in the game.
Maybe it’s now too late in the day for the ORC to turn its ship around.
Perhaps better to call in the tugs to haul it — and all its fellow regionals — off to the breakers yard.
And maybe, as well, when Parliament finally sits down to determine the shape of the now proposed local government reforms, it’s catchcry should be “back to the future” — remembering all the while that those who fail to heed past mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
- Mike Horder is a retired lawyer now living in Wanaka, who served three terms as a Clutha district councillor, from 1989 until 1997 .
