Hide blatantly misleads on local boards

The Government must know they are pushing the super city up hill in the face of an increasingly sceptical public and news media. This morning’s Herald declares:

The way it is shaping up, the single mayor and council will be a puppet show, purely for democratic appearances, while the real decisions are made by people the public has not elected and will never see. It cannot stand.

The Herald was talking about what it calls the Orwellian-named Council Controlled Organisations, but the issue of local boards is just as troubling to the Government right now, with widespread suspicion that the boards will be paper tigers. A good indicator is the level of  Government spin.

Rodney Hide and his associate minister of local government John Carter are going around town saying their local boards will have the power to “make by-laws”, when they have specifically ruled out the local boards having any rule-making powers.

Have a listen to Hide on BFM’s The Wire yesterday. Breathtaking spin. And select committee chair John Carter has been trying to pull the wool over the eyes of submitters all week with this line about local boards being able to make by-laws.

The sad truth of the Hide super city model is that the local boards can only advocate to the Super Council for a by-law, and lobby them to pass it, just like any other lobby group in Auckland can. In fact, the government banned the local boards from having any regulatory powers in their second super city bill passed last year.

The Super Council is only allowed to delegate certain non-regulatory powers to local boards in areas like parks and libraries, except where a coordinated approach outweighs the benefits of a local decision, except where decision making would be more effective if integrated with other Council decisions, and except where the impact of a decision goes beyond the local board area.

You could drive a truck through all those exceptions. Does anyone really think the new Council will willingly delegate powers downwards to local boards?

Rodney  Hide can spin all he likes about how local boards “are key to encouraging Aucklanders to become more actively engaged” but that won’t happen if the government leaves local boards as toothless talkshops.