One cannot help but wonder if there is more than meets the eye to the Hawke's Bay Regional Council's decision to prosecute the Hastings District Council over the gastro crisis.
The common question from many when the outbreak was happening was "Where is the HBRC?" Day after day the Hastingscouncil and the Hawke's Bay District Health Board fronted for briefings on the situation, but the regional council seemed to be lurking in the shadows. Even when a joint press conference was specifically called for the district and regional councils, only the district council fronted.
Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule and his chief executive Ross Macleod apologised very early in the piece, but not much was heard from the regional body.
Many people believe that last week's decision by the regional council, which even took new council chair Rex Graham by surprise, was taken too quickly and that they should have waited for the government-appointed inquiry to finish its work before deciding to prosecute.
Apparently the regional council's reasoning is that they only had six months to prosecute so needed to move quickly. Given that the inquiry was planning to sit next month, surely there would still have been time. As a result of the prosecution, the inquiry has since been postponed at the request of the Hastings council.
One theory I have heard, which actually seems quite plausible, is that the regional council was worried that its own actions would be questioned by the inquiry, so they wanted to get in first.
Whatever reason, most ratepayers will be annoyed by what they view as unnecessary spending of public money.
