City councillors want their information 'warts and all'

Hamilton's mayor Julie Hardaker. Photo / Christine Cornege

Hamilton city councillors are at odds with some senior council managers, who they say are "vetting" information given to the council.

The Herald has seen emails between senior managers co-ordinating how and when information is presented to councillors.

But the authors of the emails, Hamilton City Council deputy chief executive Blair Bowcott and general manager of infrastructure Chris Allen - say there was no intention to mislead or hide information.

The council's finance and monitoring committee chairman, Dave Macpherson, and councillor Ewan Wilson say the emails imply staff are vetting information councillors get.

Mr Macpherson said councillors should be given information "warts and all".

The emails were sent to the Herald by the council's former V8 infrastructure project manager, Barry Easton, who was copied into the correspondence at the time.

In his email, Mr Bowcott responded to an admission from a staff member they mistakenly reported figures to council as being "folklore".

"My use of the language folklore was for my staff to say if you start using a number it becomes the accepted number and if you are going to use a different number let's make sure our basis for that number is correct," Mr Bowcott said.

In an earlier email in January, Mr Allen told staff to keep information about the council's City Heart project financial status confidential, saying: "It would not be helpful for this to have a widespread distribution to be brought up to council in anything other than a managed process."