Editorial: Super-council needs to be told the rules

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide is asking for trouble in refusing to set in law the powers of the Auckland Super City's 19 local boards. Initially, the board's roles and functions will be set by the transition agency that is designing the Super City.

But much of the substance will reside in the hands of the Auckland Council. That procedure, says mayoral aspirant Len Brown, is "like asking the monarch to draft the Magna Carta".

It is a reasonable comparison. This has the makings of discord and discontent, not the unity that is meant to be at the heart of the Super City.

Mr Hide is remarkably dismissive of warnings about the process. He clings to a misguided belief that it is not his ministerial role to decide what the local boards and the Auckland Council will do.

He was not even swayed by the submissions to a parliamentary select committee by most Auckland councils, the New Zealand Community Board executive and the Auckland District Law Society, all of which wanted the local boards' powers set in law. That committee's report spoke of allocating the decision-making of the two tiers according to "clear principles".

But confronted by the nitty-gritty of that relationship, it reached for the too-hard basket. The minister appears only too happy to follow suit.

The transition agency says it expects to have "meaningful information" about the roles and functions of local boards available in March. Its decisions will apply when the boards come into existence after next year's local body elections.

But the Auckland Council will have the final say in what each of the boards is able to do, and it is not obliged to delegate all that much. The relevant legislation says, as a matter of principle, that local boards will decide local issues and the Auckland Council regional issues.

The council will, however, ultimately decide what is local and what is regional. It must work only on the principle that decisions should be devolved to boards "unless the nature of the activity is such the decision-making on an Auckland-wide basis will better promote the wellbeing of the communities across Auckland".

That sounds like a prescription for delegating very little for the sake of consistency.

If so, the boards will become no more than sounding boards for displeased citizens. They will be unable to raise their own revenue or hire staff.

If a community wants extra services, the Auckland Council will have to approve a targeted rate for that area. It is easy to see the boards spending much of their time and energy seeking to breach such unwarranted uniformity, or lashing out at the council in other ways as a means of venting their frustration.

Lost in the process will be their intended role of responding to, and providing an effective voice for, the concerns of their communities.

It is not too late for the Government to act. Local boards would have every chance of living up to their billing if a set proportion of the rate collected by the Auckland Council was returned to each of them, for both their statutory responsibilities and for discretionary use.

Their statutory responsibilities should include local planning and resource consents, and they should have maximum discretion to maintain and develop parks, swimming pools, libraries, community centres and sports complexes with funds of their own.

If there is no change and the boards are rendered toothless, Aucklanders could all too soon feel estranged from the Super City. The Auckland Council will seem a remote, out-of-reach entity. Mr Hide must make it his job to ensure the local boards are more than an inconvenient afterthought.