Bill Sutton: Council leaders must earn their salaries

Bill Sutton

The recent water inquiry report, together with the looming parliamentary election, has provoked a fascinating correspondence about accountability for local government mistakes.

Given the Ruataniwha Dam has not yet been approved, let alone built, the many issues relating to it have so far taken a back seat. The Havelock North water-poisoning disaster, agreed by all sides to have been one of the worst such events in New Zealand history, has understandably been the main focus.

The excellent summary in Hawke's Bay Today, of the report's findings on who made which mistakes, should be required reading for anyone who, like at least one Hastings District councillor and mayoral candidate, wishes to exonerate one council and blame another.

The summary shows most of the mistakes were from the actions, or inactions, of the Hastings District Council (HDC). The leader of HDC at the relevant times was of course the current mayor, Lawrence Yule, who this year is standing for election as National's candidate for the Tukituki electorate.

The mistakes made by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council (HBRC), which was headed at relevant times by firstly Alan Dick, then Fenton Wilson, both of whom are still councillors, mostly resulted from HBRC failing to monitor HDC's actions and ensuring it did what it was supposed to do.

Interestingly, the Government-appointed inquiry report did not lay any blame on the Government, despite its central role in passing the relevant legislation and ensuring local government does what IT is supposed to do. As Sherlock Homes once remarked, the most interesting aspect of the unsolved murder mystery may often be the dog that did not bark. Why didn't the dog bark? Could it be because its owner didn't want it to?

Leaving the role of Government aside, a number of correspondents have suggested that mayors and/or chief executives should not be held accountable for council mistakes. All the blame should fall on the council workers lower down the food chain. In my opinion this suggestion is an outrage, and I can't believe even the people who expressed these views can seriously believe them.

Mayors, council chairmen and chief executives are paid huge salaries by the ratepayers to carry out demanding and responsible tasks, the chief of these being to ensure that council staff do the work they are paid for doing, and thereby deliver the outcomes the ratepayers expect.

A leader who doesn't carry out these demanding tasks doesn't deserve to be paid, let alone re-elected, and if there is no mechanism for sacking them immediately, they should be expected to first apologise and second resign. If they don't, then the voters at the next election should sack them.

That's called democratic accountability and in many cases it's the only form of accountability we'll ever see.

The position of ordinary councillors is a bit different. In my opinion, if a councillor carries out their main tasks of listening to their constituents, keeping themselves well informed on the issues, and speaking up in public for what they believe is right, they should only be held accountable if they spoke up for, or stayed silent about, bad decisions.

This includes defending bad decisions after the event. Councillors who make serious mistakes should either apologise and resign immediately, or expect to be sacked at the next council election.

And they should not then be immediately appointed to lucrative council-funded positions by their former colleagues, as happened with one recent deputy mayor.

That, in my opinion, was a deliberate insult to all Hawke's Bay ratepayers.

Bill Sutton was Labour MP for the former Hawke's Bay electorate and later served as a Hawke's Bay regional councillor.

The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion, and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.